Miss Management: Show me the money, and give me an “e”

May 10, 2010 | Galynn Nordstrom

Each issue of Specialty Fabrics Review magazine ends with a page we cleverly call "Beginnings," referencing a story from a year in the Review's past that we think has an amusing, enlightening, pointed or sometimes disturbing take on current industry issues. With 95 years of publishing the Review behind us (not that I have been editor the entire time, mind you), there's a lot of history to mine.

In the June, 2010 issue "Beginnings," I picked up a "Personal Relations Quiz" from the January, 1945 issue of The National Canvas Goods Manufacturers Review. I didn't have room for the answers on that page, so I sent our avid readers here. (If you aren't a subscriber to the Review, you can probably figure out the questions from the answers. If not, wrest a copy of the June Review from a friend, or send me an e-mail.)

This is one of those "the more things change" type of stories ... although I do note that the style then was to spell "employee" with one "e," oddly enough. Despite the basic HR techniques described, however, I wonder if all of this is still really true in our current economic climate. Is anything more important than money right now?

And if you're the manager of a group of people terrified of losing their jobs, are you treating them as though they have one "e," or two?

Personal Relations Quiz: Answers

1. Employes sometimes object to expensive service emblems because they feel they might better have the money the company has spent for such items.

2. Strangely enough, authorities have found that workers really desire satisfaction from their job more than they do money or anything else. It is the striving for satisfaction that will make a man work overtime and cheerfully give his all for the company.

3. Workers are prone to dislike complicated wage payment plans because they cannot figure out in advance how much money they are actually entitled to. Hence, they are never quite sure whether or not they are being cheated or overpaid. Too, if they cannot understand on what basis they are being paid, they are apt, on general principles, to come to distrust the company-and thus a bad psychological setup is apt to arise.

4. The "palsy-walsy" technique may work well in the small plant, but in the large plant with hundreds of employes to deal with it quite often may lose its effect. Hence, the small plant owner or manager who uses this technique exclusively must keep an eye to the future, else his plant outgrow his technique.

5. In general, superior effort or workmanship should always be given public recognition. For this the satisfaction gained is magnified a hundred fold.

6. A "job analysis" is an analysis made of a given position, and is generally used by the personnel department as an aid in hiring suitable individuals for the certain job. If the idiosyncrasies of the job are set down, it is obviously thus easier to hire an individual with the proper qualifications to fill that job.

7. When a workman is "psychologically inefficient," he is then somehow mentally not in tune with his job. Thus, in the case of the man habitually late due to this cause, we may say that his attitude may have been due to a variety of subcauses. For instance, he may feel that he is not capable of carrying on his job properly. He may not like his job. His job may be too easy, too uninteresting for a man of his intelligence ... Any of these items might be a cause for habitual lateness!

8. It is bad policy ever to reprimand an employe in front of his fellows. This is true primarily because a public reprimand tends to injure the pride. Hence, a man who receives a bawling out in front of his friends, may say and do things-talk back, and so on-that he would never say or do if "scolded" privately.

9. In such an instance the excuse about being drafted would be reasonable. No matter how steady one's nerves, the prospect of being drafted usually has a more or less adverse effect on the nerves-tends to make one a bit squeamish. And any person in such a frame of mind would more than likely suffer from decreased production, simply because he would be incapable of giving his full attention to his job.

10. Apparently Mr. Sloan means that he phrases his orders in the form of requests. Thus, instead of giving direct commands-which all of us find more or less unpleasant to follow-he, to the contrary, asks his employes to carry out his desires.

*For the questions to these answers, read "Beginnings" in the June issue of Specialty Fabrics Review magazine.

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