So, IF YOU WANT TO GET WORK OUT OF A HUMAN BEING, your best bet is to find out what that human being needs and must get in return for the work he performs or the service he gives.
Some men seem to be born with an instinct for finding this out. But if you aren't built that way, there is no reason why you can't drill yourself to the same end by deliberately studying each case.
See, for example, how a study of this sort gets the most out of men in a large New England plant where modern management methods are making serious inroads into the old rule-of-thumb ways of doing things.
This concern was confronted with the very serious problem of maintaining a steady flow of product from one manufacturing department to another. Because of the nature of the product, skids and power trucks had been chosen as the equipment best suited for the job.
Skids and lift trucks are effective handling units. No argument about that. Their introduction into any factory which has been using more primitive handling methods should automatically cut costs. But they save precious little time and money when they aren't working, or when they are being worked uneconomically.
The problem, then, as this concern saw it, was how to be sure that Big Ed hadn't shipped off for a quiet smoke far from the maddening crowd—or that Little Joe wasn't arranging his work so that there'd be a handful of skids left over at closing time—moves that called for overtime pay.
In other words, to get 100 per cent efficiency out of very efficient handling equipment, the management realized that it must take out some sort of insurance which would guarantee Little Joe's and Big Ed's and all the other truckers' being engaged in gainful occupation eight hours—count 'em—each and every day.
The best insurance seemed to be a central dispatching system. No need to go into the details of its operation. Suffice it to say that it went a long way toward directing the efforts of the truckers along gainful lines. There came to be an orderliness which had never existed before. When a foreman put in a call for a trucker, he knew that the move would be made without unnecessary delay. In fact, orders were placed into the truckers' hands within three minutes of the time the foreman picked up his telephone to call the central dispatching department.
BUT—no attempt had been made to sell this system to the truckers. It met with some little resistance, just as anything new does. And there are ways, as who does not know, of beating any "game" designed to get more work out of human beings.
So the management—after many a huddle over this particular situation—decided upon a bonus plan.