WFH folks - how many billable hours = full time?
January 8, 2024 8:52 AM   Subscribe

I was previously in academia for 10+ years, where everyone partially worked from home and there is no life/work balance. Now I have an academic-adjacent job where I am only expected to work 35hrs a week (i.e. 8hr days minus a lunch break). Curious how others think this should translate into concentrated work time.

I mostly work from home, though I do go in roughly two days a week. On the days I go in, I'm not working non-stop for seven hours - there is a lot of "filler" like walking to different locations for various meetings, making tea, going to the bathroom, chit chat with co-workers, etc. When I work from home, I use a basic productivity tool to time how long I work on various tasks - I pause it when I do the sort of "filler" activities listed above. Manager is pleased with my work so this isn't an issue exactly, but I'm wondering for people who work from home, how much "concentrated work time" = a full 8hr day (if you include a lunch break). Thanks.
posted by coffeecat to Work & Money (18 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Are you using this because work requires it or just because you want to make sure you're working a full day? Or something else?
posted by dpx.mfx at 8:55 AM on January 8, 2024


Response by poster: Yes, just because I want to make sure I'm working a full day and also not doing more work than I'm being paid to do.
posted by coffeecat at 9:02 AM on January 8, 2024


Best answer: Back in my consulting days, we billed 6.5 out hours during a 8 hour work day, which the expectation that 1.5 hours a day was spent getting coffee, beer (this was Boulder, we drank a lot), having meetings, socializing with coworkers, etc.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 9:04 AM on January 8, 2024 [8 favorites]


I've worked from home almost exclusively since we got sent there for the covid shutdown, and after basically doing the same thing as you for counting time while in the office, I just directly translated that to being home. So, I time my day from when I sit down at my computer to when I log off in the afternoon with no concerns about accounting for coffee, bathroom, or snack breaks. I do account for longer breaks like lunch or if I'm definitely not paying attention to work for an extended period of time. To my understanding, as a resident of California I'm entitle to a 15 minute paid break for every 4 hours worked, so I figure that's part of it. Maybe check if your area has a similar legal requirement you can hang your hat on.
posted by LionIndex at 9:19 AM on January 8, 2024 [4 favorites]


Yeah, I treat it the same as if I'm in the office. Sometimes it's super productive, other times it's filled with pointless meetings and I can't get anything useful done. Sometimes I need to stare out the window for 10 minutes to get my thoughts together on a new project. Some days I'm in the groove and not getting interrupted and I have a lot to show for it at the end of the day. Some days the phone keeps ringing and I keep getting direct messages that pull me into a coworker's emergency and I don't get much done on my own projects.

Working from home doesn't stop me from being human and needing, e.g., to drink water, or stop other people from being human and needing to check in with me on stuff or to maintain human relationships. If they're paying me for that time in the office, there's no reason they shouldn't also be paying me for that time when I'm working from home.
posted by lapis at 9:34 AM on January 8, 2024 [7 favorites]


When you say "billable," do you mean you are in a field like consulting where your timesheet allocates your time into billable (ie, charged to the client) and overhead (paid by the company) time, and where you are expected to have a certain percentage of your time being billable? Or do you just mean that of the 7 working hours, you are wondering how much of that time you should be working vs drinking coffee and looking out the window? There are different ways to play the timesheet game depending on how you have to report your time, and there are going to be different expectations at different workplaces about things like "this task was estimated at three hours but it took me five hours" -- do they expect you to complete it on your own time (i.e., as a salaried employee your day might run long) or is that additional billlable work?

But in either case, as a remote worker you basically need to get tasks done and remain sufficiently accessible. What that means is going to vary a lot depending on the company culture and your job. Like, I can leave for a few hours during the day if I don't have something pressing, but it's expected that I'd be immediately reachable by phone or message during that time; I can't just go for a hike somewhere with no cell service. My partner has a remote job, but she's expected to be actually at her desk during work hours (aside from breaks and meals). There are ways to game that (like those motorized things that keep your mouse moving) but that comes with its own risks.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:48 AM on January 8, 2024 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Or do you just mean that of the 7 working hours, you are wondering how much of that time you should be working vs drinking coffee and looking out the window?

Yes, to briefly clarify that's all I mean - I am not required to report my hours in any formal way - there are no timesheets, and the only accounting of time is a weekly meeting where everyone on my team shares what they've been up to - so, it's pretty loose. I am asking since I'd prefer not to do what some people suggest - i.e. just work 9-5 at home, since I enjoy having the flexibility of say, interspersing work with doing some household chores, a yoga secession, etc. I am expected to be reachable during normal work hours, but my manager doesn't care if all of my work happens during normal work hours.
posted by coffeecat at 10:07 AM on January 8, 2024


Best answer: The yoga vs chores thing is interesting. I don't dock myself for the minute or two it takes to put laundry in or switch it to the dryer. If I were doing a yoga session, though, or taking 30 minutes to vacuum, I'd pull that out and not count it as part of my worked hours. I think I'd describe my thinking as, If the time required for the activity is well within the normal futzing-around time that happens in offices, then it's not something I need to "make up" work time for (even unofficially). If it's a major block of time (I realize "major" is subjective) where I'm really not paying any attention to work, then I wouldn't count it as part of my working time.

I've been fully remote since the start of the pandemic, as have many of my coworkers. I keep hearing from people who drop in for a day here or there that they are amazed how much time other people in the office spend chitchatting with them. You probably have a sense of that because you're doing both, but the idea that in-office work is fully productive for eight hours is false. I don't see any reason to see working remotely as different, even if the individual tasks that are pulling your attention away are sometimes a bit different.
posted by lapis at 10:17 AM on January 8, 2024 [14 favorites]


I'm a software developer and I work 4 10-hour days (roughly - it's usually more like 12-9-9-10); I would say I rarely do more than four hours of core tasks like writing code or specs in a day. I average around an hour of meetings a day, I spend a lot of my day answering questions from coworkers and waiting for coworkers to answer my questions, and honestly I spend a lot of time staring out the window and/or preparing snacks. This is pretty similar to how I worked when I went in to an office, though.

I feel like if I'm spending more than 50% of my non-meeting work day on concentration-requiring work, I'm doing great.
posted by mskyle at 10:53 AM on January 8, 2024 [5 favorites]


I’d include stuff like yoga or vacuuming in the work time. Yoga (and short naps) help you be more productive in the work hours that immediately follow. You may also think about work while vacuuming, or even call into a really boring meeting.

I would be lucky to have 3 hours of solid focus time a day in my tech job. The rest can be done in novel ways, including on a mobile phone outside of my home.
posted by shock muppet at 11:28 AM on January 8, 2024


I think you are looking at it as the company is buying your time as opposed to buying your work product. Both are valid ways to consider it. I think the best thing to do would be to find out how your employer views it.

I am not really sure how your job is structured or if it is specific task oriented or reactionary. When I managed people that had task types jobs, I did not give a wit about how much time they put in doing the work, only that the work got done. So, i was very ok with an employee that finished their tasks for the day at say 3:00pm and left for the day. They should be rewarded for being efficient. Or, if they want to do non work things or browse the internet but will always finish their day by 5:00pm, that was ok too. If they could finish their daily duties by noon, maybe I should be re-evaluating how much work to give them or how much time it takes. Why did the person before them take all day to do what this person is doing in a few hours? Probably a combination of inefficient work on the previous job holder and good work on the current. You don't want to give a disincentive to work hard by piling on more work, but the employer is still entitled to reasonable work effort during a paid day. But I know some managers and some firms that say, I am paying for 35 hours of work so here is more work. I think that way is doomed to failure as it sets up a perverse disincentive to work efficient and focused and hard.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 11:40 AM on January 8, 2024 [2 favorites]


I'd stick with 9 to 5 as the default, and when you find yourself doing (or wanting to do) something not work-related during those hours, just keep track of how long it was. Then you know how much time (if any) you'd need to make up in the evening.

I'd definitely recommend some kind of grace period, because as others have mentioned, 100% productivity just isn't a reasonable expectation.

Also, if your work is (mostly) computer-based, there are applications you could use to track how long you've been 'idle', if that would be less stressful than keeping an eye on it yourself.
posted by demi-octopus at 11:46 AM on January 8, 2024


Best answer: I'm WFH staff in academia. I used to work in the office and when I first started was gobsmacked at the amount of time people spent doing absolutely nothing. Hours and hours. And I'm talking about all levels of employees from admin assistants to VPs. People would schedule meetings and then spend the entire hour chatting about their dogs or whatever. I have a very thinky job that takes a lot out of me, so between that and what I know is the prevailing norm on campus, I feel that four hours of actual productive work a day is completely satisfactory. I do often work more than that, but I don't worry at all if it's just the four. It's been years now and I've continued to get good reviews so I presume that I have arrived at the correct conclusion.
posted by HotToddy at 1:11 PM on January 8, 2024 [6 favorites]


Best answer: Honestly, based on what I see, four hours a day is generous. The rest of the time spent doing chores and dicking around on social media is a necessary break so your mind can work effectively the rest of the time. Eight+ hour workdays are mostly lies for this sort of work.
posted by metasarah at 1:36 PM on January 8, 2024 [1 favorite]


I am fascinated by all these meetings people have where they spend their time talking about their pets for the most part. My meetings tend to include the bare minimum of social niceties/dog chat I can get away with without being 'unfriendly' and I refuse meetings that don't have an actual work related agenda and content because I have too many demands on my time. Even my coffee breaks and lunches with colleagues are rarely purely social although they tend to include more of that kind of chitchatting.

As a result I don't differentiate the time I 'work' in the offices vs remotely. My working day starts when I sit down to work and ends when I turn the laptop off. If I have to travel to get to a work location and work on the train that counts as work. If I take a 2 hr break to go to the doctor or do yoga or whatever I don't count that. If I have lunch in front of the laptop because it's that kind of day or am dialling into a call for 1.5 hrs while driving to see family for Xmas, I count the lunch or the call as working hrs.
posted by koahiatamadl at 12:49 AM on January 9, 2024


Agree that 4-ish hours of concentrated, productive work is about on target. The rest of the time is meetings, admin, answering direct messages and pings, staring out the window, digging out email inboxes, waiting for the computer to update, blah blah blah.

For your examples: I fit my tidying up around my day and don't try to make up for it later. I switch laundry, vacuum (I have a small apartment so this takes about five minutes), load and unload the dishwasher, etc, in small increments before or after meetings. Sometimes I do these things or fold laundry while on meetings that don't require me to talk or have a camera on.

Something longer, like a yoga class, is dependent on your company culture. Does your office have an expectation that you must be reachable in a certain timeframe? In my office (NB: consulting, your office may be less intense), we must be reachable between 9 and 4, and the expectation is that you respond to any email or message with a direct request ("send me this file" or "can you run these numbers for me before my next meeting?") within 30 minutes. In that situation, I wouldn't go take an hour long yoga class at a studio a few blocks away. I would MAYBE do a Peloton yoga video in my living room in the middle of the day.

BUT you may not have an office culture like mine - most people don't! I know many people in other industries who just put an hour and a half block on their calendar that says "Appointment" and everyone knows you won't be reachable during that time. Try asking around your office (or poking around on visible calendars) to feel it out. If I were to take that kind of hour and a half chunk out of my day, I would make it up later - as in, I would work an hour and a half later on another day (or I would split that time up over multiple days).
posted by airplant at 6:57 PM on January 9, 2024


"walking to different locations for various meetings, making tea, going to the bathroom,"

In a normal full-time job, at least in the US, you are allowed two 15-minute breaks (morning and afternoon) and one lunch hour, in a 9 hour workday (8 to 5, for example) so I would not worry about the "filler". These are a normal part of the workday
posted by TimHare at 8:29 PM on January 9, 2024


I worked for 15 years on-site in academic libraries and recently left for the wild west of self-employment and I typically work from home. I religiously track my time, whether I am doing client-based work or working on my own business. I'd say that I'm pretty consistently working around 4-5 "focus" hours a day. There's probably another hour or so of "filler" work I don't bother to track (short emails that typically take 10 minutes or less to deal with).

For what it's worth, even though this feels like I'm "working less" than I did in academia because I'm not logging 8:30-5 at a desk every day, I am also working way harder. It took a while to feel comfortable with 4-5 hours a day as being normal, but I find there are diminishing returns much past 4.5-5 hours.

This previous AskMe might be helpful to you.
posted by mostly vowels at 5:32 PM on January 10, 2024


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