Brooklyn who fortunately is able to go home for lunches makes a practice of taking a short sleep each noon. The private office of the executive might well provide for such relaxation when the need for it is felt. EDUCATION OF EMPLOYEES The means of education of employees in the business of the office range from an organized school maintained by the employer to suggested attendance in outside evening schools teaching related subjects. Whatever the method, however, each employee should be taught the relation of his work to that of the rest of the office, perhaps by means of a graphic chart showing the organization and the routing of ordinary work. In connection with the systematic education of employees the office should have a library of related subjects which each employee should be encouraged to use. Employees should be advised to join organizations of men engaged in similar work in other offices or in the absence of such organizations to form one of their own The latter expedient, however, should be well planned before it is launched. To insure success there must be a definite programme of work for the organization and means must be taken to prevent overforceful employees from monopolizing it. On the other hand the employer must remain sufficiently in the background to forestall an inference of paternalism. LOYALTY One result of education of employees is likely to be increased loyalty. In the introduction to Royce's Outlines of Psychology President Butler says, "No process is known to man by which knowledge will surely be converted into sympathy and insight; but sympathy and insight, however great, are invariably made greater when knowledge is added to them." Give an employee knowledge of the relation of his work to the organization as a whole, let him understand the necessity for prompt and accurate performance of his task, and such loyalty as he has will surely be increased. There is a great deal of loyalty in the world and a great deal of it is misdirected. Persons frequently are loyal where there is no obligation and the result usually is an unconscious disloyalty in another direction where there is an obligation. The attitude of employees toward one another and toward the employer furnishes many illustrations of misdirected loyalty. The idea of being a spy or a "squealer" is repugnant to the normal person but that repugnance should not cause an employee to ignore his obligation to his employer by concealing errors or worse in a fellow employee to whom he is under no obligation. An amusing example of misdirected loyalty was provided by an employee who regularly spent half an hour condoling a discharged employee each time the latter called in his effort to secure reinstatement. Upon being questioned, the employee admitted he did not enjoy the half hour condolences but he felt it his duty to encourage the discharged one. It was suggested to the employee that such encouragement should be furnished out of office hours and that there was a duty toward the employer to devote office time to office work. The loyalty of the average person is to a leader, not a movement; to a concrete personality, not an abstract principle. Loyalty to individuals composing a firm may develop into loyalty to the institution, but usually it is impossible to secure loyalty to the institution first. Hence it is important for the executive to inspire loyalty to himself. Now loyalty is strictly reciprocal and genuine human sympathy is the foundation of it. Employees must understand that the executive takes a genuine sympathetic interest in them. Needless to say in the expression of that interest the executive can never afford to be undignified. There is a type of inefficient executive for which no accurately descriptive name has been invented. He is the man who is voluntarily helpless in minor matters. If he has occasion to do some trifling thing out of the ordinary he does not delegate it to a subordinate nor does he apply himself intelligently to doing it. He consults one or more subordinates as to the best way of doing the thing and finally does part of it himself. His conduct, if not the result of temporary mental aberration, cannot be said to result from a desire to be waited upon; if so, he would delegate the work. It seems an attempted flattery to the subordinates; he ostensibly admits that he cannot do the thing (which isn't true) and places himself on a par with the subordinates in an unctuous discussion of the way to do it. He may be seeking to inspire loyalty by showing that after all he is not superior to the subordinates and thus he and they should have mutual sympathy. Such conduct is not the way either to get the thing done or to inspire loyalty. HABITS OF WORK Habits are not all bad habits. Good habits may be as strong as bad ones and should be developed to the greatest extent possible. The formation of habits tends to standardize work, and standardization of work is one of the greatest aids to the efficient dispatch of it. The habits of prompt and correct filing of papers, using a standard form of address in correspondence, securing for one's self such information as is needed without unnecessary interference with others, devoting similar parts of the day to similar work, arranging papers in the order in which they are to be used-all obviate the time and mental effort of decision in individual cases. Hence rules should be established standardizing all procedures which are capable of standardization, and exact obedience to those rules should be required; but standardization must not be permitted to engender love of routine for the sake of routine; that would make an end out of a means. Wise rules may seem foolish at times; in emergencies the following of a wise rule may have provided the single element of success. In a large office there was a rule that the treasurer should not sign a cheque which was not initialed by the bookkeeper to indicate that it had been entered in the cash record. One day an uninitialed cheque for a large amount was presented to him for signature. He spoke to the bookkeeper over the telephone and was assured that the cheque would be recorded as soon as it was signed. He thereupon signed it and had it returned to the accounting department. In the meantime the bookkeeper was called to the president's office on another matter, the recording of the cheque was overlooked, and a few days later an overdraft of the bank account resulted. The treasurer was the offending person most at fault. He had disobeyed a wise rule which at the time seemed foolish in view of the bookkeeper's assurance that the matter would receive his attention. Habits of work should be developed to secure the best managerial results. Nothing which can be standardized in a way to secure the utmost utility should be left to haphazard and occasional performance. In the using of periodical accounting statements the routing of them may be highly important. They should pass in regular channel through the hands of executives who need the information contained in them, and each executive should initial the statements to place himself on record as having secured the information. In one instance a business permitted large discounts to certain customers. There never was any consistent attempt to ascertain whether such discounts were confined to those entitled to them until the routing of a monthly accounting statement required the signature of an executive certifying that the discounts were correct. In every group of workers there is a tendency to form a crust of custom which may become so strong that it cannot be broken from within. This is because it is normal for persons to acquire most of their intellectual habits from those with whom they associate. Many organizations seem ready to advance to more efficient methods but they do not advance and there is no apparent reason. Analysis will usually show that their failure to advance is due to a crust of custom. In such a situation there must be an insinuation of new ideas from without. Bagehot in Physics and Politics says, "One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. It is, as . people say, so 'upsetting'; . you do not at once see which of your old ideas it will or will not turn out." The insinuation of new ideas should, except in emergencies, be as painless as possible and the most painless way is by slant-wise suggestion. Slant-wise suggestion is the kind used by Iago on Othello. It slides the new idea into the other mind without drawing attention to the suggester. It succeeds because it catches the other mind off guard and so does not have to overcome the natural tendency to combat a direct suggestion. In slant-wise suggestion an executive has a decided advantage due to his prestige as executive, because persons are most susceptible to suggestion from those clothed with prestige. This principle probably was at the root of the statement attributed to Napoleon that men are like digits in that they get their value from their positions. Suggestion should be reiterated, preferably in varying forms, and it becomes more powerful as it increases in volume. A person responds most readily to suggestions which strike him at about the same time from different directions. But suggestion to have a permanent effect must make some appeal to reason. It has been said that virtues grow on an intellectual stalk and right conduct is thought-out conduct. CAPITALIZED EXPERIENCE No experience is of importance unless it is capitalized. The results of it should be so observed and recorded that it may furnish a guide for future action. Habits of work should be inculcated to cause a repetition or avoidance of the experience according as it is good or bad. Thinking about an experience alone is of no value because thought that does not induce action is worthless except as mental exercise. Any experience which shows more efficient methods or better results should be utilized by the establishment of precedures to secure a repetition of it. A DAY'S WORK FOR A DAY'S PAY This means of getting the work done is frequently the hardest to acquire. Employees who could not be induced to steal money are often most serious offenders in stealing time, and executives are no less indictable than employees. Moral laxity in the use of time for which one is paid probably results from the great waste of time which is one's own. No number of books on how to live on twenty-four hours a day or how to use the margin of one's time seems able to check this waste. In the office the first requirement seems to be the establishment of a standard for each grade of employees. It is obvious that standards must differ with grades. Compensation of men who are employed to produce ideas is fixed on a time basis only as a rough approximation for convenience. An idea which occurs to such a worker while idly looking out the window or during a wakeful moment of the night may be of incalculable value. Such workers can be judged only by the general result of their work. But employees who cannot fairly be classified as idea producers should be held to a more rigid standard. The stenographer, the bookkeeper, the clerk, should at least keep busy during the office hours established although no way is known to |