Time management: does automation really free up time?
In Zurich’s financial services, insurance, tech and European headquarters of international groups, automating repetitive operations appears to offer a direct response to overload. Yet the management question is more specific: how can we determine whether automation frees up time for the team’s priorities, rather than simply transforming its work?
What the literature establishes
Lisanne Bainbridge (1983, Automatica) describes the “ironies of automation”: removing routine operations from an operator’s role can leave that person monitoring the system and handling the most difficult situations. This classic analysis shows why eliminating a manual operation does not mean eliminating human work. For time management, it suggests distinguishing the execution time removed from the supervisory and recovery work that remains.
A mechanism: actual use matters as much as the tool
Raja Parasuraman and Victor Riley (1997, Human Factors) distinguish the use of automation, overreliance, underuse and inappropriate design or deployment decisions. Their review examines, among other factors, how trust, reliability and workload influence reliance on automated systems. Time savings therefore also depend on how people use the tool and manage its limitations.
The premature conclusion
One might infer that every automation initiative eventually costs as much time as it saves. These papers do not support that conclusion: they illuminate mechanisms and conditions of use without establishing a universal time balance. The useful decision is to evaluate a task as a whole, rather than treating manual work and automation as inherently opposed. (our executive and employee training programmes)
The limits of the evidence and conventional calculations
These two papers offer a conceptual analysis and a research review, not a measurement of time savings in Zurich businesses. Applying their insights to office software or generative artificial intelligence therefore requires local testing. A calculation restricted to production time may overlook configuration, maintenance and exception handling, or confuse time eliminated with time transferred to a colleague.
A practical check in Zurich
As part of SHR’s “Time Management & Prioritisation” programme, a Zurich team can test the automation of a recurring report, whether it works in finance, insurance, tech or a European headquarters. For two weeks before and two weeks after deployment, it records the minutes everyone involved spends on production, supervision, corrections and maintenance, with initial configuration recorded separately. It then compares total human time per deliverable accepted under the same quality criteria, noting differences in volume and complexity: the comparison remains descriptive, but verifiable. If a saving emerges, the manager names the priority to which that time should be reallocated and checks the next time log to establish whether the reallocation actually occurred. To go further: explore the Time Management & Prioritisation training in Zurich, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Time Management & Prioritisation in Zurich
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