Increasing Human Efficiency in Business Part 21

SOCIAL HABITS

Our treatment of others is largely a matter of habit. We are affable or gruff according to habit. Honesty and dishonesty in dealing with others is, in the main, a matter of habit.

The honest man is the one who takes honesty for granted and acts honestly from habit.

So soon as he begins to observe that he is an honest man, to call attention to the fact, and to be much impressed by the honor of his choices--at that moment suspicion of him should be entertained, for honesty has with him ceased to be a habit.

We cla.s.sify individuals largely by means of their personal and social habits. By these the gentleman is recognized as surely as the boor. By means of them we select our friends and engage new employees. Efficiency in every life calling depends upon our success in dealing with people. Such success is largely dependent upon the social habits that we acquire.

OCCUPATION HABITS

Until the recent rise of interest in psychology, relatively little attention had been given to the study of those habits which are developed in business. When proper care is not given to the formation of these habits developed in connection with one's daily occupation, wrong habits are certain to appear. The mason makes two motions with his trowel where he should make but one. The accountant subst.i.tutes "short cuts" in adding where all the operations should be taken in regular order and made as automatic as the few short cuts previously developed. The executive has the

habit of depending upon "desultory" memory where the logical should be developed. The salesman in speaking to a critical customer says "he don't," instead of saying "he doesn't"; "gents' goods" instead of "men's goods."

Every investigation into the human actions and the human methods of thinking as involved in business reveals the presence of unfortunate habits such as the examples here cited.

Therefore, one of the most noteworthy events in the business and industrial world of the last twenty years is the study of the occupation habits of the workman to which reference was made in the first paragraphs of this chapter.

The research has been especially successful in dealing with the occupation habits of mechanics.

The fundamental discovery was made that the workman's occupation habits are not such as enable him to accomplish his task in an economical and efficient manner. To discover what occupation habits should be developed, experts in each of several typical establishments were a.s.signed the task of

making a careful study of every movement of eye, hand, foot, and body, and the rate and sequence of all the movements necessary for performing single tasks most easily and efficiently.

The experts were also to study the tools, the materials, and conditions best adapted to the work. In general, the experts found the greatest opportunity for improvement in the _*movements_ of the men. As a result of this research, numerous processes have been scientifically standardized. The workmen have been taught the new and better way and have been drilled till the processes have been, so far as possible, reduced to occupation habits. The workmen have been easily induced to acquire the new habits, as their earning capacity is thereby greatly increased.

Ordinarily, a considerable bonus is awarded to all workmen who develop the desired habits and perform the task exactly as prescribed by the expert.

An investigation into the results secured from the adoption of this scientific attempt to study and to regulate the occupation

habits of workmen reveals most gratifying success.

Mr. H. R. Hathaway, an expert engineer, testifies that "under this system a workman can turn out from two to four times as much work" as he was able to accomplish when working with his old habits,

Mr. Lewis Sanders, of the General Engineering Company, New York, reports most satisfactory results from the introduction of this systematic attempt to regulate the occupation habits of employees. A typical example which he reports is the following: It regularly took a man one minute and forty seconds to set a piece in a jig. "After a study of the exact motions required to pick the piece up and set it accurately, we showed the same man how to do it in twenty seconds." This workman soon reduced the correct movement to habit, attained the specified speed, and without in any way working harder than formerly was a.s.sisted to increase his efficiency four hundred per cent.

A well-known engineering company re-

quired the reading of twelve thermometers, each every two minutes. The man a.s.signed to the task could rarely read so many as eight of them in the two minutes. An expert took up the problem and at first could do no better than the first man. The expert studied the most favorable position of the head and eyes for reading, eliminated all useless motions, and discovered that the twelve thermometers could then be read in one minute and fifty seconds. The workman who previously had with difficulty read eight thermometers in two minutes soon acquired the proper occupation habits and was enabled to read the twelve with perfect ease. His efficiency was increased forty per cent, and the task was rendered less exacting than before.

Typewriting is carried on by habits. The habit of writing most naturally formed is that known as the sight system. Recently, attempts have been successfully made to enable the operators to form the habit of writing by touch rather than by sight. The

operator who acquires the habit of locating the keys by touch writes much faster and with less nervous strain than the operator who writes from sight.

No one has been more successful in studying occupation habits than Mr. Frank B.

Gilbreth, an expert in the building trades.

He discovered that in constructing a brick wall a good mason can lay one hundred and twenty bricks in an hour and that in laying each brick he makes eighteen distinct motions. The motions were not made in an economical sequence; some of them were useless, and merely exhausted the energy of the workman. Mr. Gilbreth attempted to apply to the industry of bricklaying the principles of billiard playing. Every motion of the mason should be a "play for position."

He should make each motion so as to be ready for the next. For example, the motion of placing the mortar for the end joint should end with the trowel in position ready to cut off the hanging mortar. When the motions are made in the correct sequence,

two or more of them can be combined and performed in but little more time than would be required to make each of the separate motions. Thus, cutting off mortar, b.u.t.tering the end of the laid brick, and reaching for more mortar can all be performed as a single movement. In this way the motions of the mason have been reduced from eighteen to five per brick. All this change has been brought about from a study of the occupation habits of masons. In discussing the results, Mr. Gilbreth says: "It has changed the entire method of laying bricks by reducing the kind, number, sequence, and length of motions.

The economic value of motion study has been proved by the fact that we have more than tripled the workman's output in bricklaying and at the same time lowered cost and increased wages simultaneously, and the end is not yet."

Attempts to develop beneficial occupation habits in executives have not yet been exhaustively and scientifically carried out.

Such experiments are, however, sure to be

successful, and it is quite probable that before another decade has pa.s.sed the habits of executives will have been as successfully studied and controlled as have the occupation habits of mechanics cited above.

The introduction of physics and chemistry have led to marvelous results in methods of manufacture and transportation. Those who have given most attention to the advances of psychology during the past two decades are confident that by the proper application of psychology the efficiency of men is to be increased beyond the idle dream of the optimist of the past. Since by a study of habits the efficiency of men in fundamental occupations has been increased from forty to four hundred per cent, it is hard to prophesy what results are to be secured from more extensive studies.