Quality Improvement Zone

A capacity calculator is a tool that helps teams understand how much time is available for the work that matters most.

By accounting for activities such as leave, meetings, travel, training and other commitments, it provides a more realistic picture of the time available to deliver services and achieve improvement goals.

The capacity calculator is provided as an Excel spreadsheet that estimates the proportion of time available for core work activities based on the information entered. This can help individuals and teams understand how their time is currently used and identify opportunities to make better use of available capacity.

It is important to understand actual available capacity rather than assuming that all contracted hours are available for core activities. Leave, meetings, travel, training and other commitments all reduce the time available to carry out day-to-day work.

The capacity calculator can help you:

• understand how much time is available for core work activities
• identify factors that reduce available capacity
• support workforce, service and resource planning
• create more realistic work plans based on available capacity

Understanding capacity can help teams make informed decisions about workload, staffing, service design and improvement priorities.

The capacity calculator can be used by individuals or teams to better understand how much time is available for their core work activities and to explore opportunities for improving capacity.

1. Gather information about how time is spent

Identify how much time is currently spent on activities such as annual leave, sickness absence, meetings, travel, training and other non-core work activities.

2. Enter the information into the calculator

Complete the orange input fields within the spreadsheet using the relevant information for the individual or team being analysed. The calculator will automatically estimate the available time remaining for core work activities.

3. Review available capacity

Examine the results to understand how much time is available for delivering services or carrying out your main work activities. Consider whether the results reflect your experience of how time is currently used.

4. Identify opportunities to increase productive time

Use the results to explore factors that may be reducing available capacity. For example, you may wish to consider:

• reducing unnecessary meetings
• shortening meeting length
• reducing travel time
• improving staff wellbeing and attendance
• streamlining administrative activities
• reducing other non-value-adding activities

5. Model the impact of potential changes

The calculator can be used to explore the potential impact of proposed changes before they are implemented. This can help teams understand which changes may have the greatest effect on available capacity.

6. Use the results to inform planning

Once you understand your available capacity, use the information to develop realistic work plans, staffing assumptions and service improvement plans.

Example: Improving capacity without increasing staffing

The capacity calculator can help challenge assumptions about how capacity is created.

For example, if a team has 15 people and each person has 15 hours available each week for their core work, the team has a total of 225 hours of available capacity. Increasing available time by just one hour per person would create an additional 15 hours of capacity across the team, which may be similar to the capacity gained through recruiting an additional team member into the current system.

This can help teams consider whether improving the way time is used may create additional capacity before investing in additional resources.