Mr. Chowdhury, the manager of a six-month-old community-based family planning distribution project, returned to his office after his monthly meeting with the project's three team leaders. He sat down at his desk and began to look over the monthly visit report forms of the twelve family planning fieldworkers. He was surprised to notice a wide range in the number of households the different field workers had visited.
Mr. Chowdhury then got out the work plans for the twelve field workers and began to compare them with the monthly visit reports. He found that although all twelve had been assigned to visit the same number of households every two months, two of the fieldworkers working in the area north of the village and one working in the east had fallen below their targets. He also found that five of the fieldworkers had actually exceeded their targets. Mr. Chowdhury looked again at the monthly report forms and saw that the three fieldworkers who were not meeting their targets had listed on their forms several households that they had visited only once since the program began six months earlier. From the date of the fieldworker visits and from the number of cycles of pills which had been distributed, he judged that some of these couples had finished their pills several months before and had not been revisited.
Mr. Chowdhury then took out the map showing the area for which each family planning fieldworker was responsible and discovered that the fieldworkers who were not meeting their targets were all working the farthest from the central village area, in areas where the households tended to be located far from each other. He also discovered that those fieldworkers who were exceeding their targets were living in the most densely populated areas. Mr. Chowdhury decided to call a meeting of all the fieldworkers to discuss the problem.
Two weeks later, all the fieldworkers assembled in the shade outside Mr. Chowdhury's small office. "It's very nice to see you all today," Mr. Chowdhury began. "I have asked you to come because I think perhaps the work plans need to be adjusted and I wanted to discuss this with you. You have all done a very good job of turning in your monthly reports on time. In reviewing your monthly reports and looking at your work plans, I have noticed that some of you are having difficulty in meeting your targets. When we began the program, we assigned you all an equal number of households. Can anyone explain why some of you may be having trouble?"
The fieldworkers offered their opinions for the next fifteen minutes, and it became evident that the reason that certain fieldworkers were having difficulty was that they had a large area to cover and it took them much longer to travel from household to household that those fieldworkers who work closer to the central village area.
"In order for our program to succeed," Mr. Chowdhury told the fieldworkers, "We need each of you to have targets that you can reasonably reach. We also need to make certain that every household is being visited regularly so that our users don't run out of their contraceptives. This is very important, because if the users get discouraged and pass the word to their neighbors, fewer people will be interested in family planning. Remember that our government has a strong commitment to improve the health and well-being of the people through family planning, and that we will be judged by our contribution to this effort.
"Based on our discussion today, we need to adjust your work plans and decide what targets are reasonable for each of you," Mr. Chowdhury continued. "I would like to meet with each of you to adjust your targets and make new work plans. Instead of all of you having the same number of households to visit, those of you who have a large territory to cover will have fewer clients so that you can visit them regularly. Some of you are already exceeding your targets, and by making some adjustments to your work plans as well, the whole team should be able to meet its objective.
"Whether you have a large or small number of households to visit, you are all doing important work and contributing to the team's effort," Mr. Chowdhury continued. "By reassessing our work plans and making them more realistic by taking into account the locations where we work, we will not only reach as many people as possible, but couples will be revisited on a regular basis. This way they will get the support they need from you and won't run out of contraceptives. I encourage all of you to continue submitting such good reports, because without them I would not have discovered this problem. I would like us all to meet again in two months to discuss how things are going with your new work plans. If you have any problems in the meantime, be sure to let your team leader know."
Over the next two weeks, Mr. Chowdhury visited each of the fieldworkers. Working with each individually, Mr. Chowdhury reapportioned the targets. Those who worked in the areas the farthest from the central village area and had too large an area to cover each month were reassigned lower targets, and those fieldworkers who were exceeding their targets were given higher targets. Mr. Chowdhury and the fieldworkers then revised the work plans to reflect the new targets.
Telephone: (617) 524-7799
Fax: (617) 524-2825
E-mail: erc@msh.org