What mystery? The reality is that people do take pride in their work
and respond well if you show them that you are observing them. This
inevitably results in increasing productivity as the employees
themselves improve their skills. It soon becomes a game with
internal feedback. Yet all that is necessary is to been seen doing
something that allows the employee to be seen.
People love competition and the worst most boring repetitive task
becomes pleasant when turned into a game. Better still, just how
many folks would spend any time throwing a baseball for wages and no
recognition and no game involved. Were do you think their
productivity would go? Now if we could apply this insight to picking
raspberries and a few other thrilling tasks about the farm.
Good management knows this although it is often because the manger in
question is a natural social organizer. If not, then the manger must
make himself pay attention and cause appropriate activities to take
place. It is never enough to simply grind the numbers.
The
lasting mystery of the Hawthorne Effect
Esther Inglis-Arkell
The Hawthorne Effect is cited by both business experts and
psychology experts, but rarely in the same way. Some say it's real,
some that it's real but misinterpreted, and then others that it
doesn't exist and never has. It all started with an attempt to
increase productivity at a factory in the 1920s, and we've been
arguing about it ever since. What does it mean? You tell us.
The story of the Hawthorne Effect begins in the 1920s, when
productivity studies began at the Hawthorne Works electrical
equipment factory in Illinois. They continued for the better part of
a decade, with investigators tweaking nearly every aspect of working
life. They changed the break schedule, the length of the working day,
even the climate conditions. The most famous segments of the
Hawthorne Works project were the so-called Illumination Studies,
where investigators brightened the lights in the factory.
Productivity increased. They brightened them some more. Productivity
increased. They brightened them yet again. Productivity increased.
They dimmed the lights until the factory was darker than it had ever
been before. Productivity increased.
There were few things that researchers did that
could decrease productivity. Surprisingly, they found that
one of the few things that did was a series of small pay raises, but
soon found that the workers had gotten together and planned to
decrease their productivity because they thought the combination of
heightened productivity and a little extra cash for people meant that
the higher-ups were going to fire some extraneous workers. Shortening
the working day by too long decreased overall productivity as well,
although hourly productivity increased with shorter hours. Mostly,
according to the original interpreters of the experiments, it seems
that any meddling caused productivity to go up.
For many scientists this was an example of the bias that comes
from people's understanding that they are part of an experiment. No
matter how much researchers might try to make experiments controlled,
they can rarely control for the fact that the people involved know
they are being experimented on. Business managers and practical
psychologists took a different view - or rather a few different
views. Some believed that the constant signs that they were being
watched kept workers productive. Some thought that it was the
knowledge that they were part of an experiment made workers feel that
their job was important, and so they worked harder. Others thought
that the change itself kept the day fresh. Elton Mayo, who was one of
the people who coined the term, "The Hawthorne Effect,"
believed that the sympathy and communication that the researchers
gave to the workers might have made them more productive.
Many modern researchers consider the Hawthorne Effect no more than
a myth. There are quite a few problems with the study. For one thing,
in some cases workers received productivity reports, and often worked
towards known productivity goals, which may have influenced them more
than the trivial changes in working conditions. As for the famous
illumination studies, most of the data on them was lost or destroyed;
they became more anecdotal than anything else. When a copy of the
data was found on microfilm, analysts noted that the lighting levels
were changed on Sunday, the day off for workers. Monday was more
productive than the Saturday before. However, Mondays
were always more productive than the final days of the last
week, even if no changes were implemented. The jump in the output
numbers was largely due to the day of the week, not the change in the
conditions. The most famous result of the study may have been
entirely fictitious.
Which was not to say that the study was necessarily useless. The
long-term factory workers who had been there for the long years of
the studies did improve their performance with much coaching and
eight years of practice in making electrical equipment under many
different conditions. And a lot of modern medical facilities
implement Hawthorne-influenced policies in which they let workers
know that they'll be keeping track of certain medical problems - for
example, infection rates - and see a drop in infection and an
increase in cleanliness protocols. When people know someone,
somewhere, will be taking note, they are more apt to change their
behavior. But if any random change or hint of watchfulness has an
effect on workers, no one knows. If the Hawthorne Effect holds true,
there are few ways to test it. What do you think?
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