Outsourcing seems to be the wave of the future in terms of business efficiency. Many companies even practice what I call internal outsourcing, meaning they still perform some tasks internally, but they charge the internal users accordingly. Our travel agency at work does this now. They promise to get us really good rates, but they charge us a standard fee for our services so that their department looks profitable and my department can make better business decisions when choosing between our internal travel agent and other competitive agencies.

Everybody charges everybody for any work they do, so we all look like a bunch of sole proprietors who are connected inside this bigger organization. The company uses this charging system to evaluate how well people are doing. Chargability. Despite the fact that we auditors have little or no control over our own schedules (especially in the beginning), we are evaluated based on how much time we charged out to clients and internal departments during the year. Every once in a while someone reviews our chargability and tells us all to work harder.

This all sounds relatively logical except the part about us having no control over our own chargability. You see, I have been pretty lucky so far. I have consistently been assigned to jobs that keep me busy at least forty hours a week. And after busy season, I continue to be busy on Japanese clients that keep me busy more than fifty hours a week. I look like a model employee from a chargability standpoint, but I really have done nothing to deserve praise.

As a matter of fact, I feel kinda dumb really. Since we don't get paid overtime anymore, there is really no incentive for me to work more than forty hours a week. Supposedly overtime is factored into my base salary, but to the extent that I work more overtime than other people at my level, I am being underpaid. Thus, people with high chargability should feel dumb for working too much.

To thicken the plot, our Japanese division has further problems because many of our Japanese jobs are smaller. Due to budget constraints, many people feel like they cannot charge the full amount of hours they work on Japanese jobs. This is strictly against firm policy, but due to the unprofitability of many of these jobs, Japanese staff have no choice. Thus, staff in their division have low chargability, especially during the summer months when they are even fewer Japanese jobs going on. Therefore, these people look like they are overpaid and underworked when they often put in more hours.

Anyway, the reason I have time to write all about this, is because my project for this week was cancelled at the last minute. This is the first down time that I have had since I started the firm really. My chargability is suffering this week due to no fault of my own. Hoewever, I am using the time wisely to catch up on some old todo items. Until next time...