1. 10 Reasons to do a DILO At Least Once in your Life

2. Introduction
You never know what someone really does until you step into their shoes.
The DILO process, that’s stands for; a Day in a Life Of, used as part of the Lean Sig Sigma process, is done by shadowing a worker during the entire shift and helps one understand what others do through observations, typically of Maintenance Technicians
At C&W Services, the Productivity and Optimization Team applies this process, not only to Maintenance, but also to other service lines, including Operators, Cleaners, MAC Technicians and Office Services employees.
The process assesses productive time, time spent on non-value added activities and wasted time.
Interestingly enough, we are the only company in the industry that is assessing its operations through this process on a regular basis with an that has an entire team dedicated to the project.
Moreover, this process has never been applied in the janitorial industry before.
But, how does C&W Services, and our customers, benefit from DILOs?
Why do we dedicate so much time and effort to execute them?
What do we learn when we do a DILO?

3. 1. We measure the productivity of our workers
Well, this is obvious, right?
DILOs give us the data we need to understand what our employees do every day, which activities that do are productive and which are not.
With these data, we provide recommendations for improvement.
We utilize an App for iOS or Android to time all what the workers do during the day.

4. 2. We understand firsthand what we do
This starts to make sense.
We sell services and we focus our efforts to convince the clients that we know what we are doing and that we do it better than anyone else.
To understand this, we have to see firsthand what our employees do in the field for our clients throughout their entire shift.

5. 3. We put ourselves in the shoes of the workers
While we’re simply observing our front line staff, we end up exhausted just by following them around and keeping up with them.
Since they are the ones that are mainly creating value in the company, everybody should know where and how this value is generated and what it means to “almost be them” for a day.

6. 4. We appreciate the hard work our people do
We observe what people do and how dedicated and committed they are to do their jobs and our clients.
We know they are not pretending for our benefit.
More times than not, we encounter customers who tell us how wonderful people are.
Everybody in the company should have the opportunity to see this.

7. 5. We identify obstacles
By identifying hurdles at the field, we can help remove them and improve productivity.
A few of scenarios include: a new worker without a site map, working alone at night that needs to finish a maintenance activity in a room with which he is not familiar with.
Another employee might have to fill her bucket in a tub at college residence hall because she doesn’t have the keys of the janitors’ closet to fill the bucket with a proper hose.
At C&W Services, we identify these problems and come up with immediate solutions and increase our workers productivity and efficiency.
The better we understand what real obstacles our team members face in the field, the better we will focus the company’s efforts to remove or eliminate them.
If you are in Business Development, Human Resources, Solutions, Operations, Finance, Support Areas, you can bring home some ideas to help our workers remove obstacles more effectively.

8. 6. We observe what happens in the account
Even though a DILO is intended to shadow only one person for the entire shift, it also gives the observer the opportunity to see other people at work, safety practices, the environment of the site, the use of our branding, client interaction and many other situations.
It helps us understand the day to day in the entire account not just the day of one employee.
This provides us with information that can be used to make data-based recommendations for operation improvement and also disseminate best business practices in other accounts found at the accounts level.
If accounts are the core of our business, everybody needs to know how they operate.

9. 7. We see supervisors at work
Watching the supervisors and how they interact with employees and the client gives us a glimpse into the environment of the site and subsequently how staff might feel at their account.
For C&W Services, Field Leaders are a key position of our operations, thereby the importance of having a motivated, well trained, people oriented leaders on the field.
We see that too during the DILO execution.

10. 8. We interact with the clients
Everything in our company is customer centric.
Although the work we do with DILO’s is for internal purposes and an internal continuous improvement process, in many cases we have the opportunity to directly interact with our customers and clients.
Whenever we have this opportunity, clients have praised us for the effort that C&W Services does in working to improve itself.
Clients are interested in learning more about the outcome of the visit and how it will benefit them.
As mentioned before, in many occasions, they want to be sure we know how great our employees are.

11. 9. We understand better the cause of overtime and how it is used
Our DILO is intended to be done in an eight-hour shift, not to observe overtime, but in many occasions, we can identify the reason of why people work overtime.
When we ask why this is happening, the explanations vary: the technicians decide their own schedules, the client expects overtime, they need people to stand by in case something happens and some other reasons.
We still have not found a place in which we could say, without a shadow of doubt, that working overtime was indispensable.
Our Team is focused on productivity, and per Lean Six Sigma principles, overtime is almost always, an inefficiency.
By identifying its root causes, we can provide recommendations to the account to mitigate and reduce the overtime usage.

12. 10. We have fun
As hard as it is to work for an entire shift just observing what people do, trying to stay out of their way, walking around without disrupting the customers, taking notes and timing activities, we really have fun getting to know the wonderful people that work for C&W Services, what they do for our clients and the wonderful accounts we serve.

13. For all this and much more, I believe that everyone should participate in a DILO at least once in their life.

14. Questions?