Full Capacity Protocol
Like so many of us, the hubs and I enjoy a hospital TV show – one of our favorites was ER, which was popular when our daughter was young. Watching ER together was important date night material when we were busy with our young family. Even now, if I hear the theme song, I can see the opening scenes in my mind’s eye – the busy emergency room, with high-stakes situations moving at lightning speed.
Sometimes the ER would get so busy (Very! Special! Episode!), the doctor in charge of the ER would “divert” emergencies away from her hospital during times of an intense number of patients. She would send the ambulances to other area hospitals because their unit could not safely handle any more cases due to overcrowding.
What she was doing, I now know, was executing what is sometimes called “Full Capacity Protocol” (FCP), which is a system used in hospital settings. While medical settings use FCP by name, other industries also have productivity capacity system to ensure they can maintain commitments to customers and stakeholders.
These systems and protocols are all voluntary in many settings, and I suggest that higher education leaders interested in creating appositive workplace take a lesson from this concept.
In a hospital setting, FCP begins with assessment of tangible resources. “Full capacity” is determined based on the amount of equipment available in the facility (such as number of beds at different levels of care) or intangible variables such as availability of personnel. Using these measurements, the staff can assess resources availability based on demand of patients. For example, when bedspace is 85% full, the capacity level may be altered to respond. The system is designed to identify cues for the hospital to use that helps them define when it is no longer able to safely provide care and divert patients to other hospitals. In a factory, understanding full capacity can mean identifying healthy levels of output as related to available resources. (In effective systems, there are also emergency protocols understood to be used when special circumstances require a temporary exceeding of the FCP.)
In human service industries (such as education), a critical resource is employee time (and energy). Assessing the amount of work that can be completed by a team is a critical aspect of any manager’s toolkit. When a leader-boss overcommits their team’s time capacity, they can cause high stress on their productivity and see a significant decrease in morale.
Crafting a version of your own department Full Capacity Protocol can be a good solution.
While your office isn’t a hospital (but you are as witty as Dr. Meredith Grey and as attractive as Dr. Doug Ross), you certainly can assess your tangible and intangible resources and determine what your “full” looks like in all aspects of your department. To do this, consider all the expected outcomes of your department and the resources needed to accomplish them satisfactorily. (This exercise may be a good one for a team discussion at your planning retreat!). You may discover that the biggest challenge is measuring “time needed” for projects, or you may find that your greatest barrier is that your office is pulled in lots of directions, or that priority setting causes conflicts among team members with different objectives. No matter where you land – it’s a constructive conversation for your group and will help you understand both your office’s limits and full potential.
I have been an employee in an office that used a system like FCP, and it was a godsend. I had a boss once who stridently asserted the amount of time needed for each of our department’s expectations and used these guidelines to assess our ability to take on new projects. For this leader, a priority was to maintain a high level of morale and productivity among team members, even when it meant that we were discouraged from taking on exciting new opportunities without sunsetting an existing responsibility or program (I didn’t always like hearing “no” when I wanted to take on a new idea, but I appreciated the help in managing my productivity in a healthy way). As a result, our department was focused and highly productive.
As a cautionary tale, here is an interesting note: FPC is challenging to maintain in a culture that undervalues saying “no.” In hospital settings, for example, one friction point can be medical staff who make self-determined exceptions to the protocol out of a desire to “go above and beyond” to help. I think we can all imagine that happening in higher education as well – a well-meaning sapro who stresses the office capacity because they cannot bear to say “no” to a campus partner or student. While such empathetic actions are admirable, they can also strain the system beyond capacity.
Overwhelmed by this exercise but interested in what it might do to help your unit? Consider beginning with one service or program, and build from there over time, once program at a time. And get your team involved!
