Functions of the Employment Manager
The primary functions of an employment manager are to hire shop employees (and often office employees also), to superintend transfers and discharges, to assist in determining rates of pay, to study the causes of labor turnover and absenteeism and strive to reduce them, to adjust grievances, and to recommend changes in working conditions which will eliminate fatigue and accidents, or will improve the health and spirit of the force.
In performing these functions the employment manager will need to organize a staff and provide himself with proper office aids. He will require a set of labor records, which will reveal for each department of the business the degree of efficiency being attained in the utilization of labor. He will analyze the sources of labor supply and make studies upon which job specifications, which set forth the qualifications required for each task, can be based. He will install such methods of physical and mental examination as will safeguard the force against the hazards of the occupation and the hazard of co-employment with men unfitted for their work.
To the employment manager often falls the function of supervising the training of employees by apprenticeship, in vestibule or shop schools, or by Americanization programs.
The employment manager should be the chief agency of his corporation in forming and executing the policies which may be adopted for keeping the worker up to the standard. These efforts may take any one of a variety of forms. In one case a restaurant may be opened; in another housing may be provided. In one plant a mutual benefit organization may be a success; elsewhere local transportation may be a serious problem, or a recreational or thrift campaign may occupy the most attention. Each industrial situation requires particular study. The prescription of economic and social remedies should rest as strictly upon diagnosis as does prescription in medical practice. This means that the employment manager should know how to make industrial and labor surveys.
Finally, in connection with the government of the shop, the employment manager will have a hand in drawing up shop rules, and will, by means of suggestion systems and control sheets, deduce the significance of complaints and the causes of discharge. He will be in contact with shop committees, should such be formed. And he will be a harmonizer and mutual interpreter in all collective bargaining negotiations with organizations of employees, striving ever sincerely to reach a fair and permanent basis for loyal co-operation.
It will be observed that most of these functions are not new in industry. They are now being gathered together under one authority so that they may be handled in a more expert manner, that they may be harmonized into a consistent policy, and that they may be made the definite responsibility of competent officers.
In such a summary of possible activities as the foregoing, the range of duties indicated is wider than would be actually undertaken in most individual cases. Nevertheless, the employment manager has need of a firm grasp on the technique of his art, and an acquaintance with the successful policies of other employers.
He is called upon to practice human engineering, and he has a leading part in transforming the relation of employer and employee from a mere “cash nexus” into a satisfying human relationship. Before the employment manager there opens one of the finest opportunities American business life has to offer. In proper ratio to these opportunities should be the dominating purpose and the training of the candidate.