Also, setting goals, keep remembering that tasks vary. Don’t let your monitoring system penalize people, for instance, who fill out forms more complicated than other workers‘.
Keep your commitment to quality. Be willing to give employees some time away from arduous work at the tube. It’s a good way to reduce expensive errors. And tube breaks might not cost you that much in the end. Can you, for instance, design your people’s jobs to use them fully while limiting their time in front of the screens? Maybe you can’t. Perhaps, with thorough computerization, there aren’t many off-line jobs left. But try. Maybe, for instance, some data-entry clerks, showing high motivation, can work part time in low-level telephone sales. The clerks won’t feel so trapped; and you may discover some top-flight talent.
Ask your employees for their ideas. Who says every tube break absolutely has to be a work break?
Plan, however, for breaks of one kind or another. NIOSH favors breaks “of at least fifteen minutes every two hours” for moderately heavy terminal work and the same breaks every[every] hour for workers in the most demanding, repetitive tasks. A British labor group even suggests structuring the workday so that people spend no more than half of it at the terminal. You might chafe under those restrictions—many American companies would—but don’t scoff at your own people’s ideas on breaks as long as they do the work.
Here again, think about the Canary-in-the-Mine Theory of Labor Relations; do not tune out the complainers: do not misplace machismo.
Terminal Happiness
In the Dark Ages, the pre-VDT days of newspapering, I worked on a rickety manual typewriter. How I envied Darlene at the desk behind me! I was a reporter-feature writer, while she was stuck with grinding out TV listings and obits; but Irving Leibowitz, the editor, had favored her with a Selectric, and I demanded to know why.
“Well,” Leibo said, “she’s a neater typist.” It mattered. Darlene would feed her Selectric copy to an optical character reader, which helped convert the typing to newspaper print. “There’s another reason, too,” he said.
“What?”
“Darlene has a lousier job than you do,” said Leibo, himself a manual typewriter user, “and just as much typing to do. In fact, more.”