Allowances

When carrying out work over a complete shift or working day, workers obviously suffer from the fatigue imposed both by the work undertaken and the conditions under which they are working. The normal practice is to make an addition to the basic time (commonly referred to as an "allowance") to allow the worker to recover from this fatigue and to attend to personal needs. The amount of the allowance depends on the nature of the work and the working environment, and is often assessed using an agreed set of guidelines and scales. It is usual to allow some of the recovery period inherent in these allowances to be spent away from the workplace and this is essential in adverse working conditions. Thus, work design should include the design of an effective work-rest regime. The addition of allowances should never be used to compensate for an unsafe or unhealthy working environment. One minority school of thought suggests that relaxation allowances are unnecessary. With work which involves, say, the carrying of heavy weights, this school suggests that the observer automatically adjusts the concept of standard rating to allow for the weight. Thus, if the standard rate of performance for walking on level ground carrying no weight is equivalent to four miles per hour, then an observer rating a worker walking while carrying a weight will not expect the equivalent rate. Thus, it is argued that the weight has been allowed for in the adjustment of standard rating and any relaxation allowance is simply a duplication of this adjustment. In many jobs there are small amounts of work that may occur irregularly and inconsistently. It is often not economic to measure such infrequent work and an additional allowance is added to cover such work and similar irregular delays. This allowance is known as a contingency allowance and is assessed either by observation, by analysis of historical records of such items as tool sharpening or replacement, or by experience. The end result is a Standard Time which includes the time the work "should" take (when carried out by a qualified worker) plus additional allocations in the form of allowances, where appropriate, to cover relaxation time, contingency time and, perhaps, unoccupied time which increases the overall work cycle such as waiting for a machine to finish a processing cycle.