Realization!

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Last night, a thought hit me and I realized that we have all misinterpreted Aditi's words when she said she didn't need as many headcount as Singapore! I believe she actually meant she would need more headcount than Singapore.

Training has been going on for about 1 month. My understudy can actually ask about things that I have been telling her so many times. Yesterday, she said I only told her once that's why she didn't know what to do. This time, when I told her, she finally decided to take out her pen and paper to note it down.

That's when I knew. Aditi needs to hire a secretary for her otherwise she will forget to note things down or she won't know where her notes are. So if each of the schedulers got a secretary, of course they need more headcount.

If the secretary is good enough, she can double up as a receptionist. Everytime when I am teaching my understudy something and we get interrupted, she picks up the phone. Have you ever seen someone rushing to the toilet at the end of a long movie? She's like that with the phone, dying to pick it up. I don't mean she uses the phone as her toilet. She just uses it either to ask her secretary at home to take down notes for her or to update all her friends on the latest news of our company (we suspect she is a commercial spy).

Perhaps, if the department has enough budget, Aditi should consider hiring someone else just to help them with all their work other than scheduling. Because simple work like inserting presentation items and updating the promo strategy takes her half a day when I only take one hour max. With this new headcount, my understudy can concentrate on her log and just get the helper to bring her tea, answer her phone calls and do the other nitty gritty stuff that schedulers are supposed to do.

Perhaps I should submit a manpower analysis to Aditi...