Frederic Taylor applied the scientific method to management. In many cases, this meant measuring a process to determine its optimal possible output. From your own work experience, discuss a time you have seen measurements used to manage a process. Examples might include allowing a certain amount of time for a phone call or a project deadline. Do you believe the results were optimal, based on the measurement used?
In theory, measuring performance sounds good: you work and produce more, you gain more. According to this method, the only motivation for employees is the money – the drawback is that any perks and benefits are short term, later people become stressed and demotivated (which, obviously, leads to unproductiveness and high turnover rate that, as we learned in Unit 2, causes additional costs and issues). Even though the application of the Scientific Method recently is often impractical, you can (at least) partly find it in any company used one way or another.
To be honest, most of my working experience is connected with creative processes, so it took some time to come up with a good example. One year ago I worked as an ESL teacher in a Chinese primary school. As soon as there were only 26 classes a week (40 minutes each), I had a lot of free time which I decided to fill with some part-times. In this situation I can say, that I was the one who used the “time spent giving classes” as a measurement to manage a process – thus, the more I worked, the more I earned. The problem was, that at first I was very motivated but it didn’t last long. The benefits I got from preparing and giving more classes were great, but the work became very tiring and I was depressed at the end of the term. I didn’t want to go to any classes and gained serious health problems (and things ended up in the hospital). So, I think that for one term the work results were optimal, but as a human being, I hated that time and will never ever let this happen again.
It is obvious, that paying benefits for high productivity is fair but you should not put employees under much stress – there are too many people who will try their best and spend both physical and mental resources to complete tasks. The money they get will make them happy only for a short period of time but the stress will grow like a snowball. Usually, it ends up with employees leaving their jobs which is bad for both sides – the employee will have to spend time seeking another job while the company will lose an already trained worker, time, money, and HR resources to find another one.
References
Carpenter, M., Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B. (2010). Management Principles, v. 1.1. Retrieved from https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/management-principles-v1.1/
Mister Simplify. (2018, June 3). Taylor’s Scientific Management Theory – Simplest explanation. [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evtLzccDcUs