Work efficiency

“ Habituation to bargaining and to the competitive principles of business necessarily brings it about that pecuniary standards of efficiency invade (contaminate) 349 the sense of workmanship; so that work, workmen, equipment and products come to be rated on a scale of money values, which has only a circuitous and often only a putative relation to their workmanlike efficiency or their serviceability. ”

“ In these extensive enterprises the efficiency of the unit the individual workman becomes an item of grave economic consideration; for if it be true that the value of the individual's work (whatever it be) is increased through greater intelligence and special training, though it be only by a few cents per day, the total is of no inconsiderable moment, when his services continue through a series of years, and when, instead of one workman, thousands are employed. ”

“ It is difficult to appreciate in full measure the help which the proper use of these two elements is to the workman in elevating him to the highest standard of efficiency and speed in his trade, and then keeping him there, unless one has seen first the old plan and afterward the new tried upon the same man. And in fact until one has seen similar accurate experiments made upon various grades of workmen engaged in doing widely different types of work. The remarkable and almost uniformly good results from the correct application of the task and the bonus must be seen to be appreciated. ”

“ Shorter hours, and healthful conditions, and opportunity for the wage-worker to make more money, and the chance for enjoyment as well as work, all add to efficiency. My contention is that there should be no penalization of efficient productiveness, brought about under healthy conditions; but that every increase of production brought about by an increase in efficiency should benefit all the parties to it, including wage-workers as well as employers or capitalists, men who work with their hands as well as men who work with their heads. ”

“ Other aspects of labor to which increasing attention is given by economists are the circumstances which determine the worker's industrial efficiency. It is now recognized that the food, clothing, housing, etc., of the working classes are important, not merely because they affect the happiness of those classes, but because upon them depends the amount and quality of the work that can be performed. The standard of living influences wages not merely through the control which it may exercise over the rate at which population increases, but also because it determines the standard of efficiency. ”

“ The more proficient the workmen in their mastery of the technological expedients involved, and the greater the facility with which they are able to put these expedients into effect, the more productive will be the processes in which the workmen turn the employer's capital goods to account. So, also, the more competent the work of "superintendence," the foreman-like oversight and correlation of the work in respect of kind, speed, volume, the more will it count in the aggregate of productive efficiency. ”

“ Based on a study of psychology and of business, methods were presented which may be utilized with but little expense and yet are effective in awakening instinctive responses in the worker and hence greatly increasing his efficiency. The present chapter will deal with an even more effective means of securing an attitude of industry since it appeals to three of the most fundamental and irresistible of man's instincts.
With most of us the degree of our laziness or our industry depends partly upon our affinity for the work, but chiefly upon the motives which stimulate us. ”

“ In the same way maximum prosperity for each employee means not only higher wages than are usually received by men of his class, but, of more importance still, it also means the development of each man to his state of maximum efficiency, so that he may be able to do, generally speaking, the highest grade of work for which his natural abilities fit him, and it further means giving him, when possible, this class of work to do. ”

“ It is the same at all efficiencies, and there is no inducement whatever for a worker to increase his efficiency. Under such conditions the average worker will only do enough work to enable him to keep his job, and will resist all attempts to find out whether the work may be done more efficiently. ”

“ Records of individual efficiency are comparatively easy to make when output is separated. But even when work must be done by gangs or teams of men, there is provision made in Scientific Management for recording this gang work in such a way that either the output or the efficiency, or both, of each man shows up separately. ”

“ It is quite true that these various stimulating factors cannot be produced indefinitely; tasks must ``stale,'' praise grow monotonous, salaries touch their top level. But ``making good'' and finding interests in work crystallize into habits which endure as long as conditions remain fair. The rise of the efficiency curve thus depends upon recurrent periods of successful struggle followed by periods of habit formation and by the development of powerful spontaneous interests. ”

“ Addressing a succession of new tasks, the interest of novelty has stimulated him to an uncommon degree and produced an unbroken record of high efficiency. That this has continued over a considerable period is partly due, beyond doubt, to the sustained interest in his work excited by the broadness of the field before him, the bigness of the company, the size of the appropriation at his disposal, the unusual experience of scoring hit after hit by comparison with the house's low standards, the frank and prompt appreciation of his superiors, and substantial advances in salary. ”

“ The increased efficiency of machine tool work will inevitably make possible a great reduction in hours of labor, when the workers themselves control industry for their own benefit rather than for that of a class bent on still further increasing its own wealth and power. ”

“ Many large commercial houses give new employees regular courses in company methods before intrusting work to them; the instructor is some highly efficient specialist, who shows the beginner *how to get output and quality with the least expenditure of time and energy. ”

“ In order to accomplish all this in, say, the business and work of a factory, there must be an efficiency engineer, who shall spend days and weeks and months in finding out what the right order of motions is, what the best arrangement of the tools and materials shall be, what elimination of unnecessary acts and things can be made in order that every possible waste of energy may be pared off and the path to the end may be absolutely, sternly direct. ”

“ In order that he may have every opportunity of reaching a high efficiency without undue strain or discomfort during his work, every detail of the work, the machines, and the conditions, receives consideration. ”

“ Efficiency in production often demands division of labor. But it is reduced to a mechanical routine unless workers see the technical, intellectual, and social relationships involved in what they do, and engage in their work because of the motivation furnished by such perceptions. ”

“ In fact, everything is done to assist the worker to reach a high efficiency, as this means greater production besides greater reward.
The Reward System is, clearly, far better than either day work or piece work. The time study shows what is the best time in which a good average worker can do the job. A trustworthy worker and one who appreciates the time study principle must be selected for the study. ”

“ Under the natural course of things each citizen tends towards his fittest function. Those who are competent to the kind of work they undertake, succeed, and, in the average of cases, are advanced in proportion to their efficiency; while the incompetent, society soon finds out, ceases to employ, forces to try something easier, and eventually turns to use. ”

“ The grade of "industrial efficiency" recently introduced serves as a further incentive to skill and industry and will secure special recommendation for efficiency when the men are free to take their own places in the world. ”

“ By working out and establishing a standard method and standard time for various ``repeat'' operations a workman is engaged in, it encourages—and even enforces—the formation of new efficiency habits. The bonus paid for the accomplishment of the task in the specified time supplies an immediate and powerful motive to the effort necessary to master the ``right way'' of doing things. ”

“ Therefore it is for her to see what scientific management means to all these other institutions and to apply the lesson to her own realm, and make that factory of hers, that workshop, regiment, and studio, into the most efficient place upon earth!
The great movement in the interest of efficiency has its origin in the desire to get just as much result as possible out of the labor of the workers. Their strength must be conserved, not because of any philanthropic feeling for the man, but because that strength is needed for further use, in order that a greater output of the product may be gained. ”

“ Efficiency experts maintain that the average employee in our industrial and commercial institutions is only from twenty-five to thirty-five per cent, efficient. Sixty-five to seventy-five per cent, loss in productive power on the part of the forty million workers in this country constitutes an almost incalculable sum. ”

“ Before such a conclusion is warranted, we must grasp more clearly the nature of the causal relation between high standard of living and efficiency. How far are we entitled to regard high wages and other good conditions of employment as the cause, how far as the effect of efficiency of labour? The evidence adduced simply proves that a b c, certain phenomena relating to efficiency—as size of product, speed of workmanship, quantity of machines tended—vary directly with d e f, certain other phenomena relating to wages, hours of labour, and other conditions of employment. ”

“ For the first time in many years the employer is getting from his men the 100 per cent in efficiency for which he pays. It is a safe assertion that prior to the panic the efficiency of labor was no higher than 75 per cent, perhaps not even that. ”

“ Its success is dependent upon the confidence placed by employés in the fairness of the adjustment. It stimulates to highest productiveness when prices are high, and checks production slightly when prices are low. But it provides no direct method for readjusting business under the pressure of great changes in methods of management, nor does it save from strong antipathy against the improvement of a business by labor-saving machinery. Its successful employment depends in general [pg 272] upon the character and efficiency of employers and the general intelligence and enterprise of employés. ”

“ Since the wage is the means ordinarily employed to awaken in workers the three instincts

of self-preservation, of social distinction, and of hoarding, it is not strange that an industrial age should regard it as the chief means of increasing efficiency. ”

“ All that is claimed for cooperation in production is that it makes the workman more active and industrious - in other words, that it increases the efficiency of labour. Thus its effect is in the same direction as the steam engine, the cotton gin, the reaping machine - in short, all the things in which material progress consists - and it can produce only the same result, the increase of rent. ”

“ But they contradict themselves almost in the next sentence, because they admit that efficiency of labour, which is another word for character, "is one of the factors of productivity, and the greater the national product the larger the number of persons it will maintain." ”

“ Therefore, if the worker does the job in 15 hours, he has reached 100 per cent. efficiency, which is the point to be aimed at. It should always be attained by every worker who follows the instructions accurately and works diligently, while a good worker should always be able to do it in less time. ”

“ So long as industrial efficiency is chiefly a matter of the handicraftsman's skill, dexterity, and diligence, the attention of men in looking to the industrial process is met by the figure of the workman, as the chief and characteristic factor; and thereby it comes to run on the personal element in industry. ”

“ To put the matter shortly, we have no evidence to show that a rise in the standard of material comfort of shopmen, writing clerks, school-teachers, 'busmen, agents, warehousemen, dockers, policemen, sandwich-men, and other classes of labour whose proportion is increasing in our industrial society, will be attended by so considerable a rise in the efficiency of their labour as to stimulate a series of such rises. ”

“ The efficiency of labor, in this connection, is highly important in its practical aspects, and as affecting the labor question, because as a function of cost of labor, that is, as an element affecting the quantity of things advanced to the laborers in comparison with the quantity of things returned to the employer, it includes the whole influence of machinery, labor-saving devices, and the results of invention. The quantity of produce depends, for a given advance, on the kind of machinery, the speed with which it is run, and on the general state of the arts and industrial inventions. ”

“ As in the contractor's dilemma already cited, it bears fruit in the fighting zeal, the keener interest, and the extra speed and effort which workers bring to bear on their individual and collective tasks. All the knowledge and skill they possess are thrown into the scale; their quickened intelligences reach out for new methods and short

cuts; when the crisis has passed, there may be a temporary reaction, but there is likely to be a permanent advance both in individual efficiency and organization spirit. ”