Policy & Practice | Fall 2023

reach our standard of excellence. We move people from the front door to the back room in an effort to work the oldest part of the pile. Both of these steps end up adding to the pile: it’s like a perpetual work machine that creates more work than it is able to finish. We know that each pended determi nation adds an average of three touches, and nearly 45 minutes, to the total pro cessing time. Look no further than your pend rate to calculate how much time managing to deadline is costing you. Deadlines were never intended to drive work. They were intended to catch the few that were going on too long. However, in our effort to catch those, we unintentionally made every thing take longer and turned the safety net into the standard. So, can we just ditch the deadline? Unfortunately, we cannot—work cannot expand indefinitely. What we can change is the conversation we have about deadlines and return them to their original purpose. It begins with managing the work flow from the first interaction until the last. As leaders, we cannot afford just to look at the pile and manage the oldest item first. We must change our thinking to assure the work is always moving forward. There are three strategies to managing work this way. n First, know how long the work really takes! An eligibility decision does not take 240 hours to complete, and an assessment is not a 360-hour endeavor. That is just how many work hours we allot for them to be done. The difference between how As leaders, we cannot afford just to look at the pile and manage the oldest item first. We must change our thinking to assure the work is always moving forward.

long the work takes, versus the time we allot for it, is critical to the number one question leaders should be asking about work flow: How do 45 minutes become 30 days? How do 16 hours become a month and a half? The obstacles that keep us from doing the work in the expected time frame need to be removed. n Second, work the new work now! By working the new work as close to the beginning as possible, you assure that less work becomes old work. Yes, the pile needs to be worked, but if 50 applications come in the office a day, 50 should be going out, ideally the newest 50 possible. Change your management to address new work when it is new and fix the front door. n Third, get creative with your backlog! No one likes working overtime or giving up a Saturday to catch up. We particularly dislike it when we know we will just be behind again next month. However, willing to work with you to work the older work and get it off the books. When you fix the front door, you create hope that you can keep up, and with hope comes a renewed commitment to move the work along. Once you have caught up, never get behind again! You must constantly monitor performance so that on those days when you get 60 applica tions instead of 50 you can build in ways to knock them out while you are just 10 behind. Because 10 left unaddressed will kickstart the per petual work machine, and before you know it you’ll be right back to managing old work and thinking of the deadline as a standard. The true standard of excellence is that your work flows at the pace your clients and workers can support. It never sits waiting and it is not driven by a deadline. When work flows, deadlines are returned to their rightful place as a safety net, only there in case one slips and needs some extra attention. Bill Bott is the Director of Performance Improvement and the Child Welfare Practice Lead for Change & Innovation Agency (C!A®). if you get good at the second strategy, you will find workers

It is at this magic point where our once safety net becomes our new standard of excellence. If you get the stuff done by deadline you are doing great; if it goes past deadline, we need a coaching session and to set some new goals for your performance. Worse yet, since Murphy’s Law is completely out of our hands, you will now be held accountable to things completely out of your control. So how does this impact human services and what can we do about it? In child welfare there is often a 30–45 day deadline from the time a call comes in with an abuse or neglect allegation until we have a completed assessment of safety. Since it takes roughly 10–16 hours to conduct a quality assessment, 45 days should be the safety net that catches kids who have gone a month and a half without a decision. However, most agencies average right at, or slightly over their mandated deadline, which now has become the standard of excellence. Close before the deadline, you are a rock star; after the deadline, it will be reflected in your annual review. To make sure workers have every opportunity to be rock stars, we have used the following tools: 1. Rotate them out of getting new assessments so they can catch up on documentation; 2. Allow them to skip over some steps we would like to have done, but rec ognize there is no time for; 3. Build ticklers and notifications into our IT systems to remind them when they are getting behind; 4. Change the requirements to “close”; and 5. Extend the deadline and start the process from safety net to standard of excellence all over again. However, none of these things accomplish what we really want: doing the 10–16 hours of work in about 15 instead of 45 days. In benefits, there are so many eligi bility decisions nearing or at deadline that, in order to work with them, we are forced to make shortcuts to the work when it comes in. Over and over we “pend” new work so we have time to work on the older stuff and try to

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Fall 2023 Policy & Practice