CHAPTER 4 The human factor in the application of work study 1. The human factor in enterprise operations The human factor is one of the most crucial elements in enterprise operations, for it is through people that management can control the utilization of its resources and the sale of its products or services. To give the best of their ability, employees must be motivated to do so, Managers must be able to provide a motive or a reason for doing something, or make people want to do it. It is of little use for management to prepare elaborate plans or give instructions for carrying out various activities if the people who are supposed to carry out the plans do not wish to do so — even though they may have to. The result would be half-hearted effort and sloppy workmanship. Coercion is no substitute for action that is taken voluntarily and willingly. Thus, employees at all levels must feel a sense of belonging to the enterprise; they should develop a sense of security. and the feeling that they are working in a safe, healthy and enriching working environment, When this happens they will contribute not only their labour but also many useful suggestions that can lead to productivity improvement, and assist willingly the work study person in developing improved methods of work. ‘One of the greatest difficulties in obtaining the active cooperation of workers is the fear that raising productivity will lead to unemployment. Workers are afraid that they will work themselves out of their jobs. This anxiety is greatest when unemployment is already high and a worker who loses his or her job will find it hard to find another. Even in industrialized countries where the levels of unemployment are relatively lower than developing countries, this fear is very real to those who have already experienced unemployment, Since this is so, unless workers are assured of adequate assistance in facing their problems, they may resist any steps which they fear, rightly or wrongly, will make them redundant, even temporarily. Even with written guarantees, steps taken to raise productivity can meet with resistance. This resistance can generally be reduced to a minimum if everybody concemed understands the nature of, and the reason for, each step taken and is involved in its implementation, Workers’ representatives should be trained in the techniques of increasing productivity so that they will be able both to explain them to their fellow workers and to use their knowledge to ensure that no steps are taken which are harmful to them. Many of these 2526 Iumapucnon To Work STUDY safeguards can best be implemented through joint productivity committees and works coun: Tf work study is to contribute seriously to the improvement of productivity, relations between management and workers must be reasonably good before any attempt is made to introduce it, and the workers must have confidence in the sincerity of management towards them; otherwise they will regard it as a way of getting more work out of them without any benefit to themselves. If management is able to create a satisfying working environment at the enterprise and a culture that welcomes and encourages productivity improvement, then a work study development programme may be seen as “owned” jointly by managers, supervisors and the workforce. 2. Work study and management It was said above that one of the principal reasons for choosing work study as the subject of this book is that it is a most penetrating tool of investigation. Because a well-conducted work study analysis is ruthlessly systematic, the places where effort and time are being wasted are laid bare one by one. In order to eliminate this waste, the causes of it must be looked for. The latter are usually found to be bad planning, bad organization, insufficient control or the: lack of proper training. Since members of the management and supervisory staffs are employed to perform these functions, it will look as if they have failed in their duties. Not only this, but the increase in productivity which the proper use of work study usually brings about may appear to emphasize this failure further. Applying work study in one working area can start a chain- reaction of investigation and improvement which will spread in all directions throughout the organization: to the plant engineer's department, the accounts department, the design office or the sales force. Skilled workers may be made to feel like novices when they find that their methods, long practised, are wasteful of time and effort, and that new workers trained in the new methods soon surpass them in output and quality. Any technique which has such far-reaching effects must obviously be handled with great care and tact. People do not like to be made to feel that they: have failed, especially in the eyes of their superiors. They lose their self- confidence and begin to ask themselves whether they may not be replaced. Their feeling of security is threatened. At first sight, this result of a work study investigation may seem unfair. Managers, supervisors and workers, generally speaking, are honest, hard- working people who do their jobs as well as they can. They are certainly not less clever than work study specialists. Often they have years of experience and great practical knowledge. If they have failed to obtain the most from the fesources at their disposal, it is generally because they have not been trained in, and often do not know the value of, the systematic approach which work study brings to problems of organization and performance of work. This must be made clear to everybody from the very begin made clear, and if the work study person is at all tactless in haneTHE Human FacTOR or she will find that they will combine to put obstacles in the way, possibly to the point where the task is made impossible. Tf the application of work study in an enterprise is to succeed, it must have the understanding and the backing of management at all levels, starting at the top. If top management, the managing director, the managing agent or the president of the company do not understand what the work study person is trying to do and are not giving him or her their full support, it cannot be expected that managers lower down will lend their support either. If the work study person then comes into conflict with them, as he or she may do in such circumstances, he or she may well lose the case, however good it may be, if an appeal is made to the top. Do not forget that in any organization people lower down tend to take their attitudes from the person at the top. ‘The first group of people to whom the purpose and techniques of work study must be explained is therefore the management group, the managing director or managing agent and, in large companies or organizations, the departmental heads and assistant heads, It is the usual practice in most countries to run short “appreciation” courses for top management before starting to apply work study. Most work study schools, management development institutes, technical colleges and work study organizations also run short courses for the managers of companies who are sending staff to be trained as specialists. Here it is necessary to give a word of warning. Running even the simplest and shortest course in work study is not easy, and newly trained work study specialists are: strongly advised not to try to do so by themselves. They should seek advice and assistance. It is important that an enterprise’s work study staff take an active part in the course, but they must know their subject and be able to teach it. If a course for management is to be run, however, the work study specialist must try as hard as possible to persuade the person at the top to attend and, if possible, to open the proceedings. Not only will this show everyone that he or she has the support of top management, but departmental and other managers will make efforts to attend if they think their “boss” is going to be there. 3. Work study and the supervisor ‘The work study specialist's most difficult problem may often be the attitude of supervisors. They must be won over if he or she is to obtain good results from work study; indeed, their hostility may prevent him or her from doing any effective work at all, Supervisors represent management to the worker on the shop floor, and just as departmental managers will take their attitudes from the {op manager, so the workers will take theirs from their supervisors. If it is evident that the supervisor thinks that “this work study stuff is nonsense”, the workers will not respect the specialist and will make no efforts to carry out his or her suggestions, which, in any case, have to come to them through their supervisor. 2728 InxTaDUCTON TO WoRK STUDY Before the work study practitioner starts work, the whole purpose of work study and the procedures involved must be very carefully explained to the supervisor, so that he or she understands exactly what is being done and why. Unless this is done, the supervisor is likely to be difficult, if not actually obstructive, for many reasons. Among them are the following: (1) Supervisors are the people most deeply affected by work study, The work for which they may have been responsible for years is being challenged; if, through the application of work study methods, the efficiency of the operations for which they are responsible is greatly improved, they may feel that their prestige in the eyes of their superiors and of the workers will be lessened. (2) In most firms where specialists have not been used, the whole running of a certain operation — planning programmes of work, developing job methods, making up time sheets, setting piece rates, hiring and firing workers — may have been done by the supervisor. The mere fact that some of these responsibilities have been taken away is likely to make him or her experience a loss of status. No one likes to think that he or she has “lost face” or “lost ground”. (3) If disputes arise or the workers are upset, supervisors are the first people who will be called upon to clear matters up, and it is difficult for them to do so fairly if they do not understand the problem. The sources from which supervisors are recruited differ widely in different parts of the world. In some countries supervisors are frequently selected on a basis of seniority from among the best-skilled persons in the enterprise. This means that they are often middle-aged and may be set in their ways. Because most supervisors have practised their occupation or skills for many years, they find it difficult to believe that they have anything to learn from someone who has not spent a very long time in the same occupation. Supervisors may therefore resent the introduction of work study specialists into their departments unless they have had some training to prepare them for it. Since supervisors are nearer to the practical side of the job than management, and so are more intimately connected with work study, the work study course that they take should be longer and more detailed than that given to management. Supervisors should know enough to be able to help in the selection of jobs to be studied and to understand the factors involved, should disputes arise over methods or time standards. This means that they should be acquainted with the principal techniques of method study and work measurement, and the particular problems and situations in which they should be applied. Generally speaking, courses for supervisors should be full time and of not less than one week's duration. The trainees should be given opportunities of making one or two simple method studies and of measuring the time of an operation. The value to the work study person of a supervisor who understands and is enthusiastic about what he or she is trying to do cannot be averemphasized. He or she is a powerful ally.‘THE HUMAN FACTOR ‘The work study practitioner will only retain the supervisors’ friendship and respect by showing from the beginning that he or she is not trying to usurp their place. The following rules must be abserved: (1) The work study person must never give a direct order to a worker. All instructions must be given through the supervisor. The only exception to this is in matters connected with methods improvements where the worker has been asked by the supervisor to carry out the instructions of the work study person. (2) Workers asking questions calling for decisions outside the technical field of work study should always be referred to their supervisor. (3) The work study person should take care mever to express opinions to a worker which may be: interpreted as critical of the supervisor (however much he or she may feel like it!). If the worker later says to the supervisor: “... but Mr/Ms ... said . . .”, there will be trouble! (4) The work study person must not allow the workers to “play him or her off” against the supervisor or to use him or her to get decisions altered which they consider harsh. (5) The work study person should seek the supervisor's advice in the selection of jobs to be studied and in all technical matters connected with the process (even if he or she knows a great deal about it). The work study person should never try to start alone. This list of “Do's” and “Don’t’s” may look frightening but is mainly common sense and good manners. The workers in any working area can only have one boss — their supervisor — and everything must be done to uphold his or her authority. Of course, ence the work study person and the supervisor have worked together and understand one another, there can be some relaxation; but that is a matter of judgement, and any suggestion for relaxation should come from the supervisor. A great deal of space has been given to the relationship between the work study practitioner and the supervisor because it is the most difficult of all the relationships, and it must be good. One of the best methods of ensuring that this is so is to provide bath parties with the proper training. 4. Work study and the worker ‘When the first conscious attempts at work study were made at the turn of the century, little was known about the way people behaved at work. As a result, workers often resisted or were hostile to work study. During the past 40 years, however, a great deal of research has been carried out to discover more about the way people behave — the aim being not only to explain that behaviour but, if possible, also to predict how people will react situation. For a work study specialist this is an important considerati through his or her interventions he or she is invariably and continuously creating new situations 2930 InerRooUCTION To Wonk STUDY _ Behavioural scientists believe that individuals are motivated to act in a certain way by a desire to satisfy certain needs. One of the widely accepted notions about needs was developed by Abraham Maslow, who postulated that there are certain essential needs for every individual and that these needs arrange themselves in a hierarchical pattern. Maslow argues that it is only when ‘one need becomes largely satisfied that the next need in the hierarchy will start to exert its motivating influence At the bottom of the hierarchy are physiological needs. These are the basic needs that must be met to sustain life itself. Satisfying one’s physiological needs will be the primary concern of any person, and until one has done so one will not be concerned with any other issues. However, once workers feel reasonably sure of fulfilling their physiological needs, they will seek to satisfy the next need in the hierarchy, that of security, Security is taken to mean a feeling of protection against physical and psychological harm, as well as security of employment. For workers who have already satisfied both their physiological and their security needs, the next motivating factor is that of affiliation, that is wanting to belong to a group or an organization and to associate with others. Next on the hierarchical scale is the need to be recognized, and this is followed by the need for fulfilment (sometimes called “self-actualization”). This last need expresses the desire of people or workers to be given an opportunity to show their particular talents. Mastow's hierarchy of needs fulfilment recognition affiliation hysiological In practice, most people satisfy some of these needs in part and are left with some that are unsatisfied. In developing countries people are probably preoccupied more with their basic needs. In developed countries, on the other hand, where physiological and security needs are normally met in large part, people would seem to be motivated more by needs at the upper end of the hierarchy, ‘One of the interesting results of the research carried out in this area, and which should be of concern to us here, is the discovery that, in order to satisfy affiliation needs, workers associate with each other to form various types of informal group. Thus a worker is usually a member of a task group, that is a group composed of workers performing a common task. He or she may also be a member of various other groups, such as a friendship group composed of fellow workers with whom he or she has something in common or with whom he or she would like to associate, This means that every organization has a formal and an informal structure. The formal structure is defined by management in terms of authority relationships. Similarly, there also exists an informal organization composed of a great number of informal groups which have their own goals and activitiesTHe HUMAN FACTOR and which bear the sentiments of their members. Each group, it was found, expects its members to conform to a certain standard of behaviour, since otherwise the group cannot achieve its goal, whether this be accomplishing a task or providing a means for friendly interaction. It was found, for example, that a task group tends to establish among its members a certain quota for production which may or may not be in line with what a supervisor or a manager wants. In a typical situation, a worker will produce more or less according to this informally accepted quota. Those who are very high or very low producers, and who thus deviate substantially from that norm, will be subjected to pressure from the group to conform to the norm. Disregarding or ignoring such basic and elementary notions of behaviour has often created resentment and outright hostility. It is now easy to understand that a work study person who makes a unilateral decision to climinate an operation, resulting in the loss of a job for a worker or a number of workers, is in fact undermining the basic need for security; a negative reaction can therefore be expected. Similarly, the imposition of an output quota on a worker or a group of workers without prior consultation or winning their cooperation can yield resentment and breed resistance. How, then, should a work study person act? The following are some useful hints: (1). The problem of raising productivity should be approached in a balanced way, without too great an emphasis being placed on productivity of labour. In most enterprises in developing countries, and even in industrialized countries, great increases in productivity can generally be effected through the application of work study to improve plant utilization and operation, to make more effective use of space and to secure greater economy of materials before the question of increasing the productivity of the labour force need be raised. The importance of studying the productivity of all the resources of the enterprise and of not confining the application of work study to the productivity of labour alone cannot be ‘overemphasized, It is only natural that workers should resent efforts being made to improve their efficiency while they can see glaring inefficiency on the part of management. What is the use of halving the time workers take to do a certain job or of imposing a production output on them by ‘well-applied work study if they are held back by a lack of materials or by frequent machine breakdowns resulting from bad planning by their superiors’? (2) It is important that the work study person be open and frank as to the purpose of the study. Nothing breeds suspicion like attempts to hide what is being done; nothing dispels it like frankness, whether in answering questions or in showing information obtained from studies. Work study, honestly applied, has nothing to hide. (3) Workers" representatives should be kept fully informed of what is being studied, and why. They should receive induction training in work study so that they can understand properly what is being attempted. Similarly, involving the workers in the development of an improved method of 332 Inermoouction To wore STUDY operation can win them over to the new method and can sometimes produce unexpected results. Thus, by asking workers the right questions and by inviting them to come forward with explanations or proposals several work study specialists have been rewarded by clues or ideas that had never occurred to them, After all, a worker has an intimate knowledge of his or her own job and of details that can escape a work study person, One tried and tested practice is to invite the workers in a section to be studied to nominate one of their number to join the work study specialist and, together with the supervisor, to form a team that can review the work to be done, discuss the results achieved and agree on steps for implementation. (4) Although asking for a worker's suggestions and ideas implicitly serves to satisfy his or her need for recognition, this can be achieved in a more direct way by giving proper credit where it is due. In many instances a supervisor, a worker or a staff specialist contributes useful ideas that assist the work study person to develop an improved method of work. This should be acknowledged readily, and the work study person should resist the temptation of accumulating all the glory. (5) The work study person must make it clear that it is the work, and not the worker, that is being studied. This becomes much easier if the workers have had a proper introductory course explaining the principles and outlining the techniques of work study. (6) In some circumstances it may be possible to involve the workforce in work study investigations even more directly (for example, by training them in some of the basic techniques and allowing them to contribute to discussions through the establishment of a “productivity circle”, set up for the duration of a project er on a longer-term basis). Through such a process the workers can sce more clearly that the techniques are used to study the work and not the workers themselves. (7) It is important that the work study person should remember that the objective is not merely to increase productivity but also to improve job satisfaction, and that he or she should devote enough attention to this latter issue by looking for ways to minimize fatigue and to make the job more interesting and more satisfying. In recent years several enterprises have developed new concepts and ideas to organize work to this end and 10 attempt to meet the workers’ need for fulfilment. These are treated briefly in the last chapter of this book. 5. The work study practi We have talked a great deal in the preceding sections about what is required from the work study practitioner, suggesting by our requirements a human being who is almost too good to be true. The ideal person for the job is likely to be found very rarely. and if he ot she is a successful work study specialist, can easily be promoted to higher posts. Nevertheless, there are certain qualifications and qualities which are essential for success.THe Hunaan FACTOR Education The very minimum stundard of education for anyone who is to take charge of work study application in an enterprise is a good secondary education with matriculation or the equivalent school-leaving examination, or better still a university education, preferably in the engineering or business fields. Practical experience It is desirable that candidates for posts as work study specialists should have had practical experience in the industries in which they will be working. This experience should include a period of actual work at one or more of the processes of the industry. This will enable them to understand what it means to do a day’s work under the conditions in which the ordinary workers with whom they will be dealing have to work, Practical experience will also command respect from supervisors and workers, and an engineering background enables one to adapt oneself to most other industries, Personal qualities Anyone who is going to undertake improvements in methods should have an inventive turn of mind, be capable of devising simple mechanisms and devices which can often save a great deal of time and effort, and be able to gain the cooperation of the engineers and technicians in developing them. The type of person who is good at this is not always so good at human relations, and in some large companies the methods section is separated from the work measurement section, although both could be under the same chief. The following are essential qualities: Cl Sincerity and honesty The work study person must be sincere and honest; only if this is the case will he or she gain the confidence and respect of those with whom he or she will work. Cl Enthusiasm He or she must be really keen on the job, believe in the importance of what he or she is doing and be able to transmit enthusiasm to the people round about. © Interest in and sympathy with people The person must be able to get along with people at all levels. It is necessary to be interested in them, to be able to see their points of view and to understand the motives behind their behaviour. Tact Tact in dealing with people comes from understanding them and not wishing to hurt their feelings by unkind or thoughtless words, even when these may be justified. Without tact no work study person is going to get very far, Cl Good appearance The person must be neat and tidy and look efficient. This will inspire confidence among the people with whom he or she has to work. 3334 InTRQDUCTION To WoRK STUDY | Self-confidence This can only come with good training and experience of applying work study successfully. The work study practitioner must be able to stand up to top management, supervisors, trade union officials or workers in defence of his or her opinions and findings, and to do so in such a way that will win respect and not give offence. These personal qualities, particularly the ability to deal with people, can all be further developed with the right training. Far too often this aspect of the training of work study specialists is neglected, the assumption being that, if the right person is selected in the first place, that is all that needs to be done. In most work study courses more time should be given to the human side of applying work study. It will be seen from these requirements that the results of work study, however “scientifically” arrived at, must be applied with “art”, just like any other management technique. In fact, the qualities which go to make a good work study person are the same qualities as go to make a good manager. Work study is an excellent training for young men and women destined for higher management. People with these qualities are not easy to find, but the careful selection of persons for training as work study specialists will repay itself in the results obtained, in terms both of increased productivity and of improved human relations in the workplace. Having described the background against which work study is to be applied, we can now turn to the question of applying it, starting with method study. Before we do so, however, attention must be given to some general factors which have considerable bearing on its effect, namely the conditions under which the work is done in the area, factory, workshop or office concerned.