One Thousand Ways to Make a Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money

by Harold Morse Dunphy

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.

The Employment Manager and the General Officers

The employment officer comes into a business organization as a staff man, to relieve the general executives. The general executive is a correlator. He is a balancer of claim against claim. His business is to define the general aims and to harmonize all lesser activities with them. To do this work well, he must be supplemented by specialists who do not have a wide range of functions, and so can concentrate upon some special phase and, upon demand, can furnish him with detailed knowledge and standardized special agencies.

The line executive in war determines where a battery shall go and what it shall do, but he depends upon staff men to breed a reliable artillery horse, to design convenient gun carriages, and to prepare service tables for sighting guns. In industry, the function of staff departments is already understood with reference to mechanical equipments. The general executive decides to construct a factory or a warehouse; but he depends upon an architect to design a building which will resist the probable stresses. He desires a product; but he organizes a designing department and an inspection department to control the dimensions of parts. He would not pretend to a mastery of all the sciences involved. The analogy between the function of the purchasing agent in a modern organization and that of the employment manager is close. Formerly, factory foremen thought they knew best how to purchase raw materials. The development of the purchasing agent proved the fallacy of this, since his testing laboratory and specialized knowledge made the results far superior to those obtained by the individual foremen. This principle of staff service is now being carried over into the field of human administration. General executives demand well-chosen men, men who are physically examined and pronounced safe for the work they are to do, men who are properly paid, and men who are so handled that they become permanent, contented, and loyal co-operators in the general plans of the enterprise. Of all the standardized agencies which a service department can put at the disposal of a general executive, the supreme one is a first-class man.

When it is recalled that the general superintendent of a modern factory is responsible for general supervision of the purchase, repair, and use of equipment; for the purchase, testing, storage, and accounting of materials; for shop schedules, promises of delivery, and measurement of output; for cost estimates, inspection of product, tool accounting, and all production orders, it can readily be seen that he has little time or energy to consider the interests of the workers in other than a very general way. There is some excuse for his looking upon men as merely the tools of production. With such an administrative blockade already existing, even in small businesses, there has intervened in recent decades the enormous growth of American corporations. This growth has so overwhelmed executives with functions, and so regimented each class in industry by itself, that officers and wage earners have been swept apart, and the friendly elbow-touch of the earlier day of small shops entirely destroyed. The effort is now being made to build a bridge between employer and employed—the chief span in this bridge is the employment department.