Mark Ellwood on Gender and Work Time Use
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/10/25
A 34-year time study by Mark Ellwood, President of Pace Productivity Inc., reveals that women manage time better than men at work. Women complete tasks faster, prioritize important activities more effectively, and align closer to ideal weekly schedules. These findings have significant implications for corporate policies and work-life balance strategies.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Mark Ellwood to discuss working hours and efficiency in time management from a gender perspective. Mark, what was the origin of this extensive research on hours worked, efficiency, and time use in the workplace, specifically focusing on male and female employees?
Mark Ellwood: I’m a consultant specializing in corporate time studies. I invented a small electronic device called a “TimeCorder,” which employees use to track their time on different activities. Typically, they do this for about two weeks, and most people enjoy the process. I attend many international conferences on time use, and one consistent finding is that, domestically, women spend more time on unpaid household management tasks than men. Women spend about 3.6 hours daily on these tasks, compared to only 2.2 hours for men. This includes childcare, meal preparation, and household maintenance. These patterns are well-established in many Western countries. Given that I do many of these workplace studies, I wondered what implications these domestic patterns might have at work.
Over the years, I’ve gathered data from many clients as companies pay me to conduct time studies. I’ve built up a largedatabase, so I decided to dive in and explore any differences between men and women at work that might mirror or diverge from household patterns. That was the starting point for this research.
Jacobsen: So, what are the key findings from this study, which analyzed data from 200 organizations across 41 countries?
Ellwood: Well, I collected around 500,000 hours of data from 1990 when I started these studies. I didn’t have detailed demographic information, so my first step was categorizing people by gender. For example, names like “Judy” and “Bill” were easy to classify, but names like “Kelly” required some research. After sorting individuals into male and female groups, I proceeded with the analysis. While I don’t have information on age or marital status, one might assume that many women are mothers, as they fall within the typical working age range of 20 to 50 years.
My main finding is that women are generally better at managing their time at work than men. Time management books often offer common-sense advice and case studies, but there’s not a lot of hard data. I was excited to find empirical evidence to support these insights. One of the first key findings is that women, on average, work fewer hours than men. When calculating work hours, I include personal time at the workplace—pre-COVID at the office or working from home. For instance, going out to lunch is part of the workday, so I include it. Personal time at work is minimal, about three hours per week. Men work around 48 hours per week, while women work approximately 45 hours per week.
So, there’s a clear difference—women work fewer hours than men, and that’s one of the four key findings suggesting that women are better at managing their time than men. Some might ask, why is that? What’s the explanation? The obvious connection is that many of these women are mothers, and we know from other data that they often take on more domestic responsibilities, like caring for children. Who’s going home to pick up the kids from daycare? Who’s going to take them to ballet class or prepare meals? Typically, it’s the women.
From that data, they would strive to be as efficient at work, working fewer hours but aiming to get the same amount done as men. They must manage their time effectively to fulfill their professional and domestic responsibilities. As a result, the total working hours reflect this balancing act.
Jacobsen: I crunched some quick numbers on the ratios, as this analysis is fairly binary when looking at broad statistics. In terms of hours worked, men average 48.4 hours per week, while women work 45.2 hours per week when including breaks. That’s about a 7% difference.
However, when you look at the prioritization of time for top management tasks, women allocate 22% of their time to top priorities, compared to 18% for men. That’s about a 20% difference in favour of women. While these percentages might not seem significant every week, over a year, for an employee or a middle manager, the impact can be quite substantial.
Extending that over an entire work year makes these small differences much clearer and contributes to significant company performance gains. These gains impact the “soft power” aspects, like reputation, and the “hard power” aspects, like financial capability. What are some crucial details about male and female workers that are essential for business health?
Ellwood: Indeed, and let’s revisit that 22% and 18% figure because it’s one of the more striking findings. If you look at time management books, they advise you to focus on important tasks. Some of your listeners or readers might be familiar with the Eisenhower Matrix—it’s the idea of prioritizing tasks based on whether they’re urgent and important or not urgent and not important.
Interestingly, this concept wasn’t coined by President Eisenhower; it originated with a college dean but was later attributed to him. Many time management experts have since adopted it. The key advice is to focus on important rather than urgent activities. Stephen Covey touched on this in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Still, no one has defined these “important” activities.
They’ve alluded to them, but I wanted to map them out more clearly. When I conduct my time studies, I ask people beforehand, “What are the most important tasks you need to do in your job?” You might think salespeople should say “selling,” but let’s dig deeper.
As expected, salespeople say prospecting and selling are the most important activities. Managers, on the other hand, should be coaching and directing. At the same time, field supervisors should ensure the environment is set up and safe. For customer service workers, it’s about servicing customers. So, those are the activities people identify as most important—aligning with that “important but not urgent” quadrant from the Eisenhower Matrix. Then the question is, how do their time profiles compare to those priorities?
So, if you look at salespeople who say, “I’m supposed to be prospecting,” then ask, “Are you prospecting?” the answer is yes. Still, the numbers are lower than you might expect. Outside sales reps spend about 23% of their time prospecting, while all sales reps combined are around 28%. When you map out these priorities against time spent across various jobs, you find that most knowledge workers—because we’re talking about knowledge workers here—only spend about 20% of their time on their highest-priority tasks. That’s it.
The rest of the time is spent travelling, processing paperwork, attending meetings, planning the day, and taking breaks. Suppose the average time spent on top priorities is 20%. In that case, women spend 22% of their time on their highest-priority tasks, while men spend only 18%. This means that, based on this second of the four measures, women tend to be better time managers than men.
You asked about the implications of these findings. One takeaway could be to hire more women. However, it also suggests that time management training could benefit organizations. These skills can be learned and developed. We often assume people are naturally good at managing meetings, emails, or projects. Still, we only provide a little formal training. If organizations offered more training, you could see those numbers increase.
That average 20% of time spent on top priorities could rise to 30%. That’s a significant increase—about an hour more per day spent on important tasks. In some cases, we’ve seen up to a 50% improvement, and that’s what organizations should aim for finding ways for employees to spend more time on their highest-priority tasks.
Jacobsen: Now, I want to introduce the concept of margin of error. When we compare numbers like 48.4 hours versus 45.2 hours per week, or time spent on tasks—16 minutes versus 22 minutes per task for women and men, or 22% versus 18%—we need to ask which of these differences are statistically significant and which ones are more moderate. This helps ensure that when people look at this data, they understand the magnitude of the difference and which differences are the most significant and worth paying attention to.
Ellwood: That’s a great question, and I did drill down into specific jobs to explore this further. We looked at sales reps, commercial bankers, customer service staff, financial planners, and retail store staff. We have more data in some roles than in others, but across all these job types, we were able to see significant differences.
It’s challenging to review every job in detail across all measures, but I did conduct some in-depth analysis. With thousands of hours of data, we found that these differences apply across various job types and are real and statistically significant.
Jacobsen: Did you notice any cultural factors that influenced these findings when comparing North America to Western Europe?
Ellwood: I haven’t observed any notable cultural differences. While I’ve conducted time studies in about 41 countries, most data comes from North America and the UK, making up about 80% of my database. Large multinational organizations mostly conduct these studies, so cultural differences don’t play a significant role in these findings. However, different results might emerge in other cultural contexts.
You’ve only got people’s names, and it’s hard to tell which culture they’re associated with since you don’t have that demographic data. But you’re seeing much consistency in North America and the UK.
Jacobsen: What do you think is happening in women’s work patterns, particularly in prioritization and efficiency, that gives them an edge overall?
Ellwood: That’s the toughest question of all. I can point to the data showing that women are better time managers. But then the question is, as you asked, why is that?
There may be two or three reasons. The first is the one I mentioned earlier: many women must get home to care for their children. They must be as efficient as possible during the workday to leave on time to manage their domestic responsibilities.
The second reason could be the skills they develop as busy mothers transfer to the workplace. Talk to any mother—I’ve spoken to many—and they’ll tell you that being a mother is demanding. They’re constantly juggling different priorities. Whether they’re bringing work home or managing home tasks alongside work, those experiences—handling kids’ events, cooking, cleaning—might sharpen their skills in managing multiple tasks efficiently. Those time management skills may carry over to their professional lives.
The third reason, which is more speculative, might be cognitive differences. I am hesitant to dwell on this because the data isn’t conclusive. Still, slight differences in brain function—perhaps in how tasks are prioritized or attention to detail—could play a role. However, since that’s just a guess, I’ll stay away from it for now.
Jacobsen: What could be an extension of this research? What are the “next steps” for future studies, as they say in academic presentations?
Ellwood: Well, we could certainly delve deeper into cultural differences. We could focus more specifically on mothers versus women as a whole group. I’m currently studying executive women, gathering much more detailed demographic and life experience data. This focuses specifically on senior executive women.
So, we need more studies like this, especially in the workplace. For organizations, setting measurable targets is crucial. Interestingly, we saw much monitoring during COVID-19, and people weren’t happy with it. But with my devices, employees like using them because they’re easy, fun, and anonymous. That’s the key difference.
There was a growing sentiment during COVID that we shouldn’t care so much about how people spend their time. But I disagree—you should care about it as a diagnostic tool. It’s like running a 100-meter dash. You care about the time, whether 10 seconds or 9.9 seconds. Still, it would help if you also looked at the details: steps per second, stride length, oxygen intake—all the smaller elements contributing to a successful run. Similarly, time management at work isn’t something you need to monitor constantly. Still, you should be aware of it as a tool to improve performance.
Are you working 40 hours or 45 hours? It doesn’t matter. What matters is using that time data as a diagnostic tool to figure out if you’re getting bogged down in administrative activities or if meetings are going on too long—things that everyone complains about. When you attach data to those concerns, you can use it to diagnose and address them.
Rather than me doing all the research, organizations can start to track and monitor these things themselves. They can set ideal targets. One of the things I did in my studies was establish where people ideally want to spend their time, compare that to where they spend their time, and identify the gaps.
Jacobsen: Are you something of a “time doctor”?
Ellwood: Yes, I’ve thought of that term, and there are a few “time doctors” out there. I also use the term “time diagnostics,” but it’s clunky. So yes, I am a doctor, but I’m also a consultant. I diagnose the issues by saying, “Here’s what’s happening, here are the symptoms, and here’s what needs to be done.” I analyze what’s going on, identify the problems, and then make recommendations for improvement.
Jacobsen: It sounds like you’re a Dr. When, not a Dr. Who. You have three books:
What’s your quick pitch for each of them?
Ellwood: Sure! Starting with The Poetic Path to Getting More Done, it’s an entire book of time management tips presented in poetic form. Let me read you a quick one:
Your time is your ally; it’s not a black hole.
The choice is your own to take more control.
Beginning right now, it’s for you to decide,
You’ll get more results with a new sense of pride.
Be inspired today to make a small shift,
Your time is your own—more hours are your gift.
Once you get started, you’ll be able to boast,
That you’ve got much more time for what matters most.
Jacobsen: That’s great! So, what are your core recommendations based on all of this data? Whether gendered or not, what are some key things that can help improve efficiency and make the workday run more smoothly, with positive effects like reduced workplace tension and a better sense of well-being?
Ellwood: I have two main recommendations. First, being productive means spending more time on your highest-priority tasks and less time on lower-priority tasks, like administrative paperwork. Second, work is inherently collaborative. When people complain about the volume of emails or endless meetings, I remind them that those things are what make work “work.” We should celebrate the value of staying in touch and collaborating.
That said, meetings must be run more effectively, and email should be managed better. I’ve measured the time people spend on unnecessary email, and it’s a staggering 3.4 hours per week. So, there’s much room for improvement in both areas.
Email was supposed to be the great big saviour of communication. And while it has its benefits, it also takes time. So, instead of solely relying on technological improvements to manage your time, focus on prioritizing high-priority tasks, running meetings efficiently, and communicating via email more effectively. We could all benefit from better training in these areas, and corporations should invest in such training to get the most out of their employees.
Better training is key. Companies often overlook the value of time management skills, but employees can work more effectively with proper training.
Jacobsen: Are there any other details from this study that we still need to cover?
Ellwood: We didn’t touch on the ideal profile, but we’ve covered most of the main points.
Jacobsen: Let’s dive into that quickly, then. What is the ideal profile?
Ellwood: We asked individuals where they ideally think they should spend their time across various activities. When we totalled up the differences, we found that women are closer to their ideal profiles by about three hours per week than men. So, they’re doing better in that regard as well.
Setting an ideal profile—a target for where you want to spend your time—is a useful exercise. It’s a diagnostic tool you don’t need to use constantly. Still, as many time management books suggest, it’s worth doing periodically, say for a few weeks. You can track your time using my system or any other and then compare where you spend your time versus where you want to spend it. Women tend to do this well; men could find ways to improve and close that gap.
Jacobsen: Excellent. Thank you very much for your time, Mark.
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