Cyclopedia of Commerce, Accountancy, Business Administration, v. 02 (of 10)American School of Correspondence
General
Cyclopedia of Commerce, Accountancy, Business Administration, v. 02 (of 10)
American School of Correspondence
Accounting; Business; Commerce
5. =Gang and Team Work.= If a certain number of men have been working
together under one foreman on one particular piece of work, they come
to know each other's methods and their foreman's methods intimately;
and they necessarily will become very much more efficient than when
they are shifted from gang to gang or when they have to work under
different foremen. If the record of the performance of each individual
gang can be obtained, and the men, as well as the foreman, are
acquainted with the record, a spirit of rivalry between the gangs
can be developed which will add greatly to efficiency. In making
such a record, inasmuch as the gangs are likely to vary in size, it
is necessary to have a unit of performance that will be independent
of the number of men in the gang. It will be found that, shortly
after the application of this principle, the men are themselves
making suggestions as to improvements in method; and frequently their
suggestions are immensely valuable.
6. =High Pay.= Some contractors have found it economical to pay a
little more than the prevailing rate of wages, thereby attracting to
their organization the best of the labor available. As a general thing,
a man is perfectly willing to do 10 per cent more work for 5 per cent
more pay per hour; and the difference in men is so great as to make
it more than well worth while to secure the very best of the labor
obtainable.
7. =Prompt Pay.= Men will work very much more contentedly when they
can count upon their pay with promptness and regularity. There is
nothing that demoralizes a piece of construction work more than the
postponement of a pay─day. Special care should be taken that each man's
pay is accurate. A man will seldom be over─paid unless there is "graft"
on the job, but it sometimes happens that through errors on the part of
the time─keeper or bookkeeper a man's pay is short, much to the agony
of the man himself.
8. =Early Hours.= A good deal of money is lost by the men not starting
to work promptly at the commencing hour, and by quitting before the
final hour. On a recent piece of work that had to be drastically
reorganized, an entire blasting gang rested on their shovels for over
one hour, because their foreman had decided to quit without notice,
and the man who was supposed to be in charge of the work arrived
late himself, and was detained at the other end of the job. On this
particular piece of work, it was not the habit to blow a whistle at
the commencing or the quitting hour, and the men started work in the
morning and quit work in the evening according to their own timepieces.
It was noted that nobody on the whole job quit a minute after he should
have quit, or started a moment earlier than he was paid to start.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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