THE REMEDY

True, we can determine a man’s fitness by giving him a trial. But, if he is a failure, and we learn nothing by experience, the next incumbent may be a hundred-fold worse. Furthermore, in many places, selection by trial is an impossibility, as in marriage, in the presidency of a bank, or in a general to lead a forlorn hope. There must be some better way.

Some years ago we were asked to make an investigation at a printing and publishing house. Two years before this time the proprietor had ceased to receive any profits from the enterprise and, at this particular time, complained that for months he had been putting money into the business in order to keep it going. He himself was not a practical printer and was not in immediate management of the concern. His manager, however, was an able man, a good printer, and was considered to be a good business man.

At the very outset of our investigation, we found that the foreman of the composing-room purchased type, leads, and slugs, furniture, cases, and all of the other materials used in his department. The foreman of the press-room purchased paper, ink, rollers, twine, and other things. The foreman of the shipping-room purchased packing-cases, wrapping paper, twine, nails, hammers, marking ink, and other materials he used. The foreman of the bindery purchased glue, cloth, leather, boards, paper, and wire. The office manager purchased typewriter ribbons, carbon paper, clips, paper fasteners, pins, mucilage, rulers, pens, and pencils. The foreman of the electrotyping department purchased copper, acids, metal, and tools. We were rather surprised to find that the coal and lubricating oil for the engine room were purchased by the manager himself, but not at all surprised to learn that he had never heard of such a quantity as a British Thermal unit and that he had absolutely no records to show the kind of coal most efficient under his boilers. A little further investigation showed that each head of department had charge of the stores of materials and supplies for his department and gave them out to employees upon a mere verbal request. We were not long in discovering that the foreman of the composing-room received “tokens of regard” from salesmen; that the foreman of the press-room was regularly on the payroll of several companies furnishing inks and rollers, and had a brother-in-law running a little print shop around the corner and spending very little money for ink, paper, and other such materials. Each head of a department also had full power to “hire and fire,” as he called it. The foreman of the composing-room said to us, when we questioned him in regard to this matter, “Why, if I didn’t have the power to hire and fire I could not maintain discipline in my department; rather than give that up, I would resign my position.”

As a result of this state of affairs, we found a brother of the foreman occupying an easy position in the composing-room, a brother-in-law, two nieces, two nephews, and a son occupying easy positions at good salaries in the press-room and various other nephews and other semi-dependents working away under foremen who were related to them in the various departments. In the composing-room, also, we found, upon careful investigation, that several of the employees were very heavily overpaid at times and that they divided the surplus in their pay envelopes with the foreman.

When we called these things to the attention of the manager, he was deeply surprised and pained. “Why,” he said, “every head of a department in this printing and publishing house is a personal friend of mine. I have the highest regard for them and have held their honor and uprightness so high in my estimation that it has never occurred to me to investigate their administration in their several departments. You know, of course, that this is the usual procedure in the printing business. The foremen regard these prerogatives as being especially theirs and would very deeply and bitterly resent any attempt on the part of the management to take them away.” The manager was only partly right. It is true that these practices have been followed in many printing and publishing houses; that they are followed in some even to-day; but even in his time the most progressive and successful had long ago abolished this inefficient and dishonesty-breeding system.

SCIENTIFIC PURCHASING ENDS ABUSES

To-day in every well-managed printing office, as well as every other industry, there is a purchasing department. Materials are purchased, not through favors, or on account of bonus from the salesmen, but upon exact specifications which are worked out in the laboratory. Materials are accepted and paid for only after a laboratory analysis to ascertain their true worth. Materials are kept in a stores department and are issued only upon written requisitions. Requisitions are carefully checked up, records kept to show that each department is using only its proper quota of materials and supplies of all kinds.

While the purchasing of mere inanimate material, which after all is only secondary in importance, has thus been reduced to science and art in charge of specialists, the methods of selection, assignment, and handling of employees in nearly all industrial and commercial institutions continues to-day on the same old dishonest basis as that which we found in the printing and publishing house described. Foremen, superintendents, and heads of departments still guard jealously their prerogatives of hiring and firing. So deeply rooted is this prejudice in the minds of the industrial and commercial world, that many managers have said to us in horror, “Why, we can’t take away the power to hire and fire from our foremen. They couldn’t maintain discipline. They would not consent to remain in their executive positions if they did not have this power of life and death, as it were, over their employees.”

Incidentally, we may say, that we have had almost no trouble in securing the enthusiastic and loyal co-operation of foremen and superintendents where employment departments have been installed.

SCIENTIFIC EMPLOYMENT THE REMEDY

It is becoming increasingly clear to employers that, only by following the example of the purchasing department, can industry and commerce cure the evil which we have briefly described and exemplified in the two preceding chapters. We find that employment, instead of being left to the tender mercies of foremen, Tom, Dick, and Harry who may or may not be good judges of men, who may or may not be honest, who may or may not indulge in nepotism, who may or may not pad the payroll; who may or may not be unreasonable, tyrannical and otherwise inimical to the best interest of the concern from whom they draw their living selection of help is now delegated to specialists and experts. Employment departments are now established with more or less complete control over the selection and assignment of men and women in the organization. In some of these departments complete records are kept. Exact and painstaking care is used in securing data, hunting up applicants, watching the actual performances of those who are put to work, determining whether or not they live up to their opportunities. In other employment departments this system is very loose and the departments exist principally for the purpose of securing applicants who are then turned over without recommendation to the foreman who still has the power of employing and discharging.

The remedy for which we have been looking is to be found in an employment department, organized with a carefully selected personnel, which will perform the same careful, analytical research and record-keeping functions as a scientific purchasing department. Perhaps, for the sake of clearness, it would be well for us to describe rather in detail the work of such a department.

ORGANIZATION

The organization of such a department depends entirely upon the number of applicants and employees with which it must deal and the character of the work to be done. Suppose, for example, we have a factory with two thousand employees, seventy-five per cent of them skilled, fifteen per cent of them unskilled, and ten per cent office employees. The work of such a department could be very well carried on by one employment supervisor, one assistant supervisor, one clerk and record-keeper, and part of the time of one stenographer. The employment supervisor is a staff officer. His position in the company is that of a member of the staff of the general manager or president. His work should be subject to oversight by the president or general manager alone, and he should not be answerable to any other officer or member of the corporation. It is the function of the employment supervisor to direct the work of his department, to conduct its relations with all other departments of the business, to interview, analyze, and recommend for employment all executives and employees of more than ordinary importance; to hear and adjudicate all cases of complaint or disagreement between executives or between executives and their employees and also to review cases heard by his assistant in which there is any degree of dissatisfaction with the settlement proposed.

It is the duty of the assistant employment supervisor to interview and analyze, select, and recommend for employment all applicants for minor positions in the factory and office. It is also his duty, under direction of the supervisor, to number and carefully analyze every position in the organization, determining its requirements, and, having made a careful list of these requirements in a card index, to keep it in the files of the department where it can be readily consulted. It is the duty of the clerk and record-keeper to make out all reports, to record all reports sent from heads of departments, to keep the files, to make out notifications to the paymaster and to other officers as occasion requires, and in general to keep the records and files of the department in a neat, orderly condition, up to date every moment of the day, and so managed as to yield readily and instantly any information desired.

It is the duty of the stenographer to attend to all correspondence of the department, including dictation from the supervisor and the assistant supervisor.

FUNCTIONS OF AN EMPLOYMENT DEPARTMENT

Briefly, it is the function of the employment department to secure, interview, analyze, select, and recommend for employment men and women who will pre-eminently fit into the various positions in the organization; by competent counsel, upon request, to assist the line executives in the management of employees, and, in all its activities, to act in the capacity of expert in human nature, conducting all phases of relationship between the corporation and its employees.

In detail, however, the functions of a well-organized and efficient employment department are these:

ANALYSIS OF POSITIONS

1. Theoretically, the first function of an employment department is to analyze carefully every position in the organization, listing its requirements, noting the environment and other conditions which surround it; in short, painting what will be to the members of the department a clear and easily recognizable word-picture of the aptitudes and character of the man or woman best fitted to fill that position. While this is the theoretical first function of the department, in actual practice certain conditions may arise which will make this inadvisable. But it ought to be done as quickly as possible, and the records tabulated on cards in a convenient way in a card file. These are the specifications for the human material needed in each place. The method of making this analysis varies under different circumstances.

ANALYSIS OF EXECUTIVES

2. The next step in the work of an employment department is the analysis of all executives. Each executive is interviewed and carefully analyzed for two purposes; first, to find whether he is indeed the right man in the right place; second, to observe his characteristics, his peculiarities, his personality, and to learn from him his preferences. All of these are carefully listed, and, in selecting employees, care is taken to select only those who will work harmoniously and happily with the executives under whom they are placed.

ANALYSIS OF EMPLOYEES

3. Employees in the organization at the time of the installation of the employment department are analyzed as opportunity offers. In this way the supervisor determines whether or not they are well placed as they are, or whether they have talent and abilities which would make them far more valuable in some other part of the institution. The analysis of each employee is made out either completely and in detail or in a general way, according to his importance, his future possibilities, his probable length of service with the institution, and other conditions. Clearly a great deal more time would be spent and a great deal more careful analysis made in the case of an important executive, than in the case of a day laborer engaged as a member of a temporary shoveling gang.

These analyses, after having been written out, are filed in folders. Each employee has a folder of his own, and in this are placed not only his analysis, but a sheet for the keeping of his record and all letters and papers referring to him.

SECURING OF APPLICANTS

4. Inasmuch as every live organization is always growing and, therefore, taking on new employees, and inasmuch, also, as there is a state of flux in every organization, vacancies occurring for one reason or another, it is a function of the employment department to secure as many of the most desirable applicants possible for all of the positions in the enterprise. Some of these applicants come to the employment department in the natural course of events, others come as the result of advertisements; still others because the employment supervisor and his assistant take means to ferret them out and send for them. Promising young men in schools and colleges and in the employ, perhaps, of other organizations are kept under careful observation. Data in regard to them is listed in the reserve file, and their records, as they come in various ways to the employment supervisor, are filed with them.

5. Applicants having been secured in these ways, the next step is carefully to analyze them. Under ideal conditions this analysis is made by observation, unknown to the applicant, during a pleasant interview. He may be asked certain questions, not chiefly for the sake of bringing out direct information, but for the sake of observing the effects of the interrogations upon him.

In some large organizations, in the rush season, 100 new employees may be added every day. In order to select this number, perhaps several hundred applicants may be interviewed. Obviously, a detailed and thorough analysis of each cannot be made. Under such conditions, however, the work is usually of such a character that the most casual observation on the part of a trained interviewer will reveal at once the fact that the applicant either is or is not fitted for the work to be done.

As a result of the analyses made by the employment supervisor and his staff, applicants are recommended to foremen who have made requisitions for the filling of vacancies. Bear in mind, it is not the function of the employment department arbitrarily to employ. When a desirable applicant has been found, he is sent, with a recommendation, to the head of the department which has made requisition for an employee. Then the foreman or superintendent or the manager either rejects or accepts the applicant. In case of rejection, the executive returns the applicant to the employment department, stating his reason for his action.

When an applicant is accepted, the employment department notifies the paymaster, also places a folder for a new employee in the file. It is often highly desirable, also, before sending an employee to a foreman to inform him fully and in detail as to the work he is expected to do, the conditions under which he will be expected to work, the rate of pay he will receive, the opportunities for advancement, and all other information which may decide the applicant for or against accepting the position if it is offered to him.

REPORTS AND RECORDS

6. The employment department organizes methods for receiving regular and complete reports upon the performance and deportment of every employee in the organization. These reports include punctuality, attendance, efficiency, special ability, deportment, home environment, and habits, companions, and other necessary and valuable information. Every employer who has the good of his employees and their advancement at heart ought to know these things. Reports are received from foremen and superintendents, also from others who are especially assigned by the employment supervisor to secure the information.

RECOMMENDATION FOR TRANSFER, PROMOTION AND INCREASE

7. As a result of these reports and of its own analysis, the employment department recommends for transfer from one department to another, or for promotion, or for increase of pay, such employees as merit these changes in their positions and relationship with the company. In cases where necessity seems to demand it, the employment department may also recommend the discharge of an employee.

CONSULTATION ON RATES OF PAY

8. In co-operation with properly constituted authorities, and as the result of careful, scientific study of the whole situation, the employment department assists in establishing rates of pay commensurate with the work done, with the conditions in the industry, and with their probable effect upon the loyalty, happiness, and consequent efficiency of the employees.

SPECIAL INFORMATION TO MANAGEMENT

9. Upon request of the general manager or any other executive in the organization, the employment supervisor may furnish complete information as to any employee in the organization when that information is legitimately required. Oftentimes, also, there will be a call made upon the employment department for some one with special ability to undertake a certain task. It may be that the employment department has had under its observation for months or even years some man already in the employ of the company who will exactly fill the new position or the vacancy just created. Or it may be that, upon consultation of the records, the employment department will find just the man it is looking for. In case neither of these things happen, then the right man may be found listed and described in the reserve file.

TRANSFER AND DISCHARGE

10. When a foreman or other executive can no longer use any man in his employ, he does not discharge him, but sends him instead to the employment department with a report and recommendation. Oftentimes the employment supervisor or his assistant can adjust the matter and return the man to his position, better fitted than ever to perform his task. It may be that the executive and not the employee is at fault. On the other hand, it is often the case that the employment department can take the man so returned and place him in another department, where he will be happy and efficient. It may be that the work that he has been doing is suited to him, but that his executive is not the right kind of personality for him. Whatever the employment department finds in regard to the man, action is taken in accordance therewith. In case there is real cause for it, the employee is paid off and dropped from the rolls of the company.

AID IN MANAGEMENT AND DISCIPLINE

11. Owing to his peculiar knowledge of human nature, it is often possible for the employment supervisor or his assistant to aid executives in discipline in their several departments. It has been our experience that an efficient employment department is not in existence very long before many executives begin to come in for consultation and to ask the employment supervisor or his assistant what course to pursue in reference to some particular man or some particular set of circumstances. This has been found to be one of the most valuable functions of an employment department.

SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES

12. Also because of his expert knowledge of human nature, the employment supervisor or his assistant is often called upon to adjudicate between executives, between fellow-employees or between an executive and his subordinate. Disputes and differences of opinion usually arise because people fail to understand each other. The employment supervisor, understanding both parties in the quarrel, is usually able to point out some basis of amicable adjustment and the restoration of friendly relationship.

EDUCATION OF EMPLOYEES

13. Employers are learning that the finest and most valuable assets in their employees are not their bones and muscles; not their intelligence, training, and experience when they enter the organization; but, rather, the possibility of development of their intelligence, talents, and aptitudes. Educators now almost entirely agree that the best and most serviceable education possible is that afforded by work, provided the work is intelligently directed and constantly used by those who direct it as an educational force. Employers are also grasping the great possibilities for them in this theory. Corporation schools, night schools, special classes, and many other forms of education inside the walls of commercial and industrial enterprises are being used to good advantage. In an ideal economic system, every factory, every store, every shop, every place where men and women are gathered together for employment should be, in the higher sense of the word, a school for the development of the very best human qualities.

Since this is true, who is better qualified by training, by education, and by experience to conduct this education than the employment supervisor and his assistants? If he is properly chosen for his work, he has a special scientific knowledge of human nature; he knows not only the talents and aptitudes of every member of the force, but also knows the best way for developing and bringing out these talents and aptitudes. He knows for just what vocation each one under his tutelage is suited. He knows just what study and training each one ought to pursue in order to best fit himself for that vocation.

WELFARE WORK

14. Because of its peculiar relationship to all the employees in the organization, there is no department better fitted to undertake all of that activity in connection with industrial life, which is known as welfare work or social betterment, than that entrusted with employment.

ADAPTABILITY

The organization and plan of an employment department, as we have outlined it, is, as we have said, for an institution employing two thousand men and women. For larger organizations, of course, the employment supervisor must have more assistants, there must be more clerks and stenographers, according to the number of employees handled and the character of the work to be done. There are some organizations in which there is very little fluctuation in the personnel. In such cases a small employment department is all that is necessary, even although a large number of employees may be on the payroll. In other kinds of work there is a very large fluctuation, under ordinary conditions, and in such cases it is necessary to have more help in the employment department. In the case of small business, such as retail stores, the employer himself is oftentimes the entire employment department, except for such assistance as he may obtain from a clerk or stenographer. In such a case, also, the records do not need to be so complete and so voluminous, since the proprietor can carry a great deal in regard to each one of his employees in his own mind. We know many executives in large organizations, where employment departments have not been established, who constitute, in themselves, employment departments for their own little corner of the industry. They may have only five or six employees under their care, but they handle them according to scientific principles, analyzing them and their work with just as great care as if there were hundreds of them.

The method, after all, is unimportant. It is the spirit of the work that is all important. It does not matter whether you have a huge force of clerks, assistants, interviewers, and stenographers, or whether you yourself, in your little corner office with your three or four retail clerks as a working force, constitute the whole organization. The spirit of scientific analysis and the fitting of each man to his job in a common sense, sane, practical way, instead of according to out-of-date methods, is the important consideration in the remedy which we present.