The human factor in the

application of work study

LEARNING
1. The human factor in enterprise operations
2. Work study and management
3. Work study and the supervisor
4. Work study and the worker
5. The work study practitioner
THE HUMAN FACTOR IN
ENTERPRISE OPERATIONS
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 human factor in enterprise operations
• Worker 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.
• 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.
The human factor in enterprise operations
• 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
concerned understands the nature of, and the reason for,
each step taken and is involved in its implementation.
The human factor in enterprise operations
• 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 safeguards
can best be implemented through joint productivity
committees and works councils.
• 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.
WORK STUDY AND
MANAGEMENT
Work study and management
• 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.
Work study and management
• At first sight, this result of a work study investigation may
seem unfair.
• Managers, supervisors and workers, generally speaking,
are honest, hardworking 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 resources 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.
Work study and management
• This must be made clear to everybody from the very
beginning. If it is not made clear, and if the work study
person is at all tactless in handling people, he or she will
find that they will combine to put obstacles in the way,
possibly to the point where the task is made impossible.
• 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.
Work study and management
• 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.
• 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.
WORK STUDY AND THE
SUPERVISOR
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
top 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.
Work study and the supervisor
• 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 following reasons.
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.
Work study and the supervisor
(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.
(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.
Work study and the supervisor
• 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.
Work study and the supervisor
• 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 observed:
(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.
Work study and the supervisor
(3) The work study person should take care never to
express opinions to a worker which may be interpreted
as critical of the supervisor. 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.
Work study and the supervisor
• 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, once 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.
WORK STUDY AND THE
WORKER
Work study and the worker
• During the past 40 years, 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 to a new situation. For a work study specialist this
is an important consideration, since through his or her
interventions he or she is invariably and continuously
creating new situations.
Work study and the worker
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Fu
lfil
m
en
t
Recognition

Affiliation

Security

Physiological
Work study and the worker
• 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. 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 .
Work study and the worker
Useful Hints
(1) 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.
What is the use of having the time workers take to do a
certain job, if they are held back by a lack of materials
or by frequent machine breakdowns resulting from bad
planning by their superiors?
Work study and the worker
Useful Hints
(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.
(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 operation can win them over to the new
method and can sometimes produce unexpected results.
Work study and the worker
Useful Hints
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.
(4) 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 immediately.
(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.
Work study and the worker
Useful Hints
(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 or on a longer-term basis). Through such a
process the workers can see more clearly that the techniques
are used to study the work and not the workers themselves.
(7) 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.
THE WORK STUDY
PRACTITIONER
The work study practitioner
Qualifications Required
• Education
The very minimum standard 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
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.
The work study practitioner
Qualities required
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.
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.
The work study practitioner
Qualities required
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.
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.
Self-confidence
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.