Enterprise01 · Workforce Capacity Programme
Half a working year was hiding in one team’s admin. Every year.
A working year is about 1,700 hours. In one team we assessed, about 870 of them went on repeated admin every year, spread thinly enough that nobody saw it. The larger the organisation, the more there is to find. The Workforce Capacity Programme finds exactly where those hours go, then builds the fixes that give them back to the people already there.
Or email hello@hoursback.co.uk
The programme, in one minute.
Where the hours go, and the fixes that give them back to the people already there.
What the film says
A working year is about 1,700 hours. In one team, about 870 went on repeated admin. Half a working year was hiding in one team’s admin. Every year.
HoursBack Enterprise. Workforce Capacity Programme.
01 · Diagnose. Confidential interviews, role by role.
02 · Report · The leadership dashboard. Illustrative example, with invented figures. The team’s week, hour by hour. A four-role team’s week: 150 hours worked a week, 20 of them on admin that can come back. 920 hours a year: a little over half a working year.
Hours back, role by role: 01 Finance administrator, 414 hrs / yr; 02 Operations coordinator, 276; 03 Contracts administrator, 138; 04 Reporting analyst, 92. Where the year goes, for the finance administrator: weekly reporting pack, 138h back of 506h; re-keying between systems, 92h back of 138h; chasing and status updates, 92h back of 138h; work that can stop entirely, 92h back of 92h.
The same work, at very different speeds. Weekly reporting pack, four ways of doing it, on an axis from 6 to 12 hrs a week: reporting analyst, 8h; contracts administrator, 9h; operations coordinator, 10h; finance administrator, 11h. Two slowest ways moved onto the fastest: 230 hours a year.
03 · Build programme. Illustrative example, with invented figures. Biggest drains first: chasing and status updates, 322 hrs / yr back; weekly reporting pack, 230; re-keying between systems, 184; work that can stop entirely, 184. 920 hours a year back to the people you already have. Redesigned workflows, integrations and AI agents, with a person approving wherever judgement matters. Read, draft, check, route, a person.
Proven in insurance and recruitment. ~770 hours a year, found in a specialist insurer’s finance function. ~870 hours a year, found across a marine insurance broker’s team. ~780 hours a year, found in a recruitment team.
Where it fits: growth without adding headcount, a hiring freeze, a new operating model.
HoursBack Enterprise. Next step. How much capacity is already in your team? A 20-minute conversation about where it fits. hoursback.co.uk/enterprise
02 · How it works
Diagnose first. Then build.
- 01
Diagnose
Short, confidential interviews with the people doing the work, role by role. We map where each hour goes, what is repeated, and what has drifted outside the job description.
- 02
Report
A leadership dashboard: hours recoverable by role, by kind of work, where the same task runs at very different speeds, and what to stop doing first. Conservative throughout.
- 03
Build programme
A fixed-term programme that works through the biggest drains first, with each fix scoped to what the work needs: redesigned workflows, integrations and automation across the systems the organisation already runs, and AI agents that read, draft, check and route work at volume, with a person approving wherever judgement matters. Every fix is built to the organisation's security and IT requirements, then tested, handed over and signed off.
What a leadership report shows
Every chart below is an illustrative example: an invented four-role team with invented figures. The layout is what a client receives; the figures are not client data.
03 · A team's week
The team’s week, hour by hour.
The report opens on one picture: every hour the team works in a week, and the slice going on re-keying, reporting packs and chasing. Nobody is slow; the systems just don’t talk to each other.
A four-role team’s week, hour by hour
An invented example team, not the client in the headline above. Each dot is one hour of its week (4 roles × 37.5 hours). Across 46 working weeks that is 6,900 hours, and the amber slice comes to 920 hours a year: a little over half a working year.
04 · Role by role
Hours back, role by role.
The hours each role could get back in a year. Open a row for the detail behind the number: a one-line read of the role, the work running on autopilot, and where the year goes.
time that comes backtime that stays, in the role’s colour
Most of the time back sits in the weekly pack and in keying the same figures twice.
On autopilot
- Copying figures into an old tracker nobody opens
Where the year goes
Amber is the slice that comes back; the pale bar is the rest of the time that activity takes.
Chasing updates by email takes the week in small pieces.
On autopilot
- Printing and filing documents already stored online
Where the year goes
Amber is the slice that comes back; the pale bar is the rest of the time that activity takes.
Contract details are typed into two systems.
On autopilot
Nothing on autopilot
Where the year goes
Amber is the slice that comes back; the pale bar is the rest of the time that activity takes.
Uses the quickest method for the weekly pack; the time back is elsewhere.
On autopilot
- A monthly summary that repeats the dashboard
Where the year goes
Amber is the slice that comes back; the pale bar is the rest of the time that activity takes.
Rows are roles, and the subject is the work and how it is done: this is a capacity read, not a performance review. Every figure is the conservative end of what the interviews support.
05 · Where the time goes
Four kinds of work take 2,806 hours a year.
Every dot is one hour a week across the four roles. The amber dots are the hours that come back with a realistic change: a conservative slice of each kind of work, never the whole load. The exception is work that can stop entirely, where every hour comes back. The amber figure with each row is what that comes to across a year.
hour a week spenthour a week that comes back
Chasing and status updates
All four roles
7h a week back, of 13h
Weekly reporting pack
All four roles
5h a week back, of 38h
Re-keying between systems
Finance administrator, Contracts administrator
4h a week back, of 6h
Work that can stop entirely
Finance administrator, Operations coordinator, Reporting analyst
4h a week back, of 4h
06 · Different speeds
The same work, at very different speeds.
Where one way of doing a task takes 8 hours a week and another takes 11, the faster way already exists inside the organisation. The slowest way rebuilds the pack in an older spreadsheet; the fastest pulls the figures straight from the system. It has simply never been written down as the standard.
Weekly reporting pack · four roles, one task, four ways of doing it
- Reporting analyst · 8h
- Contracts administrator · 9h
- Operations coordinator · 10h
- Finance administrator · 11h
The amber line is the gap between the fastest and the slowest way of doing the same task.
Moving the two slowest ways of doing it onto the fastest, 8 hours, gives back 5 hours a week. Across a year, that is:
230hours a year
07 · Stop doing
Some work can simply stop.
Some tasks are done every week or month simply because they always have been, and nobody uses what comes out: stopping them is the quickest capacity back.
Stop doing - heaviest first
Work running on autopilot. The quickest capacity back: about 4 hours a week, 184 hours a year.
Copying figures into an old tracker nobody opens
92hrs / yrFinance administrator
A monthly summary that repeats the dashboard
46hrs / yrReporting analyst
Printing and filing documents already stored online
46hrs / yrOperations coordinator
08 · The spec gap
Does the job still match the description?
Each role’s job description is checked against the work actually done: tasks that have drifted outside the spec, and documented duties that no longer happen. Scored by role, never by person; the team figure is the average of the role scores. It feeds straight into job design.
Each gap carries one of three tags: not in the spec, in the spec but not happening, or done on autopilot - still done every week or month, though nobody uses what comes out.
The job descriptions broadly reflect day-to-day reality. Some tasks sit outside the spec and a few documented duties are not happening. Worth an update, not urgent.
The team figure is the average of the per‑role scores.
How each role compares to its spec
In the job description
Nothing
What actually happens
Chasing colleagues for missing purchase order numbers
In the job description
Month-end reporting
What actually happens
Copying figures into an old tracker nobody opens
In the job description
Nothing
What actually happens
Answering status requests by hand
In the job description
Document control
What actually happens
Printing and filing documents already stored online
In the job description
Nothing
What actually happens
Re-keying contract details into the finance system
In the job description
Nothing
What actually happens
Answering status queries on contract renewals
In the job description
Annual review of standard terms
What actually happens
Last done before the current contract templates
In the job description
Monthly management summary
What actually happens
A monthly summary that repeats the dashboard
In the job description
Quarterly data-quality review
What actually happens
The quarter runs out before it is started
09 · Where it has been proven
Proven in insurance and recruitment.
~770hours a year
found in a specialist insurer’s finance function, mostly on tools it already paid for.
~870hours a year
found across a marine insurance broker’s team: about half a working year. Now being built out under a fixed programme.
~780hours a year
found in a recruitment team.
Where it fits
Organisations planning growth without adding headcount, living with a hiring freeze or moving to a new operating model. It answers a question they rarely can: how much capacity is already in the team, and where. For consultancies and partners, it works the same way inside your own teams.
Next step
A 20-minute conversation about where it fits.
Yearly figures use 46 working weeks. A working year is 46 weeks at 37.5 hours, about 1,700 hours. Results are hours identified in each assessment.
Not a software product and not a headcount review: the hours go back to the existing team.
Every chart on this page uses invented figures, not client data.