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Illustration for The Ninety-Four Minute Working Bee: Work-Sampling Observation and Task Attribution at 46 Community Sports Club Working Bees, Against the Signed-Hours Ledger Behind a Council Maintenance Rebate

The Ninety-Four Minute Working Bee

Work-Sampling Observation and Task Attribution at 46 Community Sports Club Working Bees, Against the Signed-Hours Ledger Behind a Council Maintenance Rebate

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement reconciles the volunteer- hours ledger behind a metropolitan council's maintenance rebate --- 11,486 signed hours from 214 working bees at 38 community sports clubs --- against two independent records of the same mornings: momentary time sampling by two observers at 46 of those bees (38,704 person-instants) and a photographic before-and-after inventory of every maintenance task completed on site. Attendees were present for 80.0% of the hours they signed for and observed on ground and facility work for 31.5% of them, the median attendee signing for four hours and two minutes against ninety-four observed minutes on task. A third of the 1,203 completed tasks had no signed attendee performing them, and club rank on signed hours is not positively associated with rank on observed on-task hours (Spearman rho = -0.29).

AuthorsMarit Osayande, Sten Okwuosa, Solveig Adeyemi
SchoolSchool of Continuous Improvement
Output typeResearch paper
FundingIndicator Stewardship Seed Fund: Keeping the Laundromat's Available-Machine Board Honest After the Regulars Stop Reporting ($158,439)
Published
DOI10.5555/slop.56i2pj
Pages6
Version1.0
LicenceCC BY 4.0

Cite as

@misc{slop_56i2pj,
  author       = {Marit Osayande and Sten Okwuosa and Solveig Adeyemi},
  title        = {The Ninety-Four Minute Working Bee: Work-Sampling Observation and Task Attribution at 46 Community Sports Club Working Bees, Against the Signed-Hours Ledger Behind a Council Maintenance Rebate},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.56i2pj},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-working-bee-sign-on-sheets-56i2pj/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}