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Subject:Re: Measuring writing efficiency? From:"Molly M. Theodossy" <mmtheodossy -at- UCDAVIS -dot- EDU> Date:Thu, 4 Feb 1999 11:51:22 -0800
At 02:34 PM 2/4/99 -0500, Brierley, Sean wrote:
>I know of a couple of situations where in-house writers were taking four
times longer than outsourced writers. In both of these situations, that was
okay because outsourcing came out of an expense account that was tracked and
for which someone was responsible; the in-house overhead of tech writing was
not tracked and the salaries were not considered a penalty against any
particular person, project, or budget <g>.
----
I wonder how much of this extra time was due to things like answering
e-mail, phone calls, staff meetings, and helping out co-workers. I think if
you are an in-house writer at a company, you are more likely to have to
deal with requests for help from co-workers while the outsourced or
contract staff does not have these distractions (at least not as often).
This seems to be a good way to measure efficiency as long as you take into
account the differences between these two groups work environments.
Molly
*****************************************************************
Molly M. Theodossy
Technology Trainer/Technical Writer
mmtheodossy -at- ucdavis -dot- edu
(530) 754-2113
University of California, Davis
