Analyzing Character by Arthur Newcomb (best ereader for epub .txt) 📕

7. As a result of these reports and of its own analysis, the employment department recommends for transfer from one department to another, or for promotion, or for increase of pay, such employees as merit these changes in their positions and relationship with the company. In cases where necessity seems to demand it, the employment department may also recommend the discharge of an employee.

CONSULTATION ON RATES OF PAY

8. In co-operation with properly constituted authorities, and as the result of careful, scientific study of the whole situation, the employment department assists in establishing rates of pay commensurate with the work done, with the conditions in the industry, and with their probable effect upon the loyalty, happiness, and consequent efficiency of the employees.

SPECIAL INFORMATION TO MANAGEMENT

9. Upon request of the general manager or any other executive in the organization, the employment supervisor may furnish complete information as to any employee in the organization when that information is legitimately required. Oftentimes, also, there will be a call made upon the employment department for some one with special ability to undertake a certain task. It may be that the employment department has had under its observation for months or even years some man already in the employ of the company who will exactly fill the new position or the vacancy just created. Or it may be that, upon consultation of the records, the employment department will find just the man it is looking for. In case neither of these things happen, then the right man may be found listed and described in the reserve file.

TRANSFER AND DISCHARGE

10. When a foreman or other executive can no longer use any man in his employ, he does not discharge him, but sends him instead to the employment department with a report and recommendation. Oftentimes the employment supervisor or his assistant can adjust the matter and return the man to his position, better fitted than ever to perform his task. It may be that the executive and not the employee is at fault. On the other hand, it is often the case that the employment department can take the man so returned and place him in another department, where he will be happy and efficient. It may be that the work that he has been doing is suited to him, but that his executive is not the right kind of personality for him. Whatever the employment department finds in regard to the man, action is taken in accordance therewith. In case there is real cause for it, the employee is paid off and dropped from the rolls of the company.

AID IN MANAGEMENT AND DISCIPLINE

11. Owing to his peculiar knowledge of human nature, it is often possible for the employment supervisor or his assistant to aid executives in discipline in their several departments. It has been our experience that an efficient employment department is not in existence very long before many executives begin to come in for consultation and to ask the employment supervisor or his assistant what course to pursue in reference to some particular man or some particular set of circumstances. This has been found to be one of the most valuable functions of an employment department.

SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES

12. Also because of his expert knowledge of human nature, the employment supervisor or his assistant is often called upon to adjudicate between executives, between fellow-employees or between an executive and his subordinate. Disputes and differences of opinion usually arise because people fail to understand each other. The employment supervisor, understanding both parties in the quarrel, is usually able to point out some basis of amicable adjustment and the restoration of friendly relationship.

EDUCATION OF EMPLOYEES

13. Employers are learning that the finest and most valuable assets in their employees are not their bones and muscles; not their intelligence, training, and experience when they enter the organization; but, rather, the possibility of development of their intelligence, talents, and aptitudes. Educators now almost entirely agree that the best and most serviceable education possible is that afforded by work, provided the work is intelligently directed and constantly used by those who direct it as an educational force. Employers are also grasping the great possibilities for them in this theory. Corporation schools, night schools, special classes, and many other forms of education inside the walls of commercial and industrial enterprises are being used to good advantage. In an ideal economic system, every factory, every store, every shop, every place where men and women are gathered together for employment should be, in the higher sense of the word, a school for the development of the very best human qualities.

Since this is true, who is better qualified by training, by education, and by experience to conduct this education than the employment supervisor and his assistants? If he is properly chosen for his work, he has a special scientific knowledge of human nature; he knows not only the talents and aptitudes of every member of the force, but also knows the best way for developing and bringing out these talents and aptitudes. He knows for just what vocation each one under his tutelage is suited. He knows just what study and training each one ought to pursue in order to best fit himself for that vocation.

WELFARE WORK

14. Because of its peculiar relationship to all the employees in the organization, there is no department better fitted to undertake all of that activity in connection with industrial life, which is known as welfare work or social betterment, than that entrusted with employment.

ADAPTABILITY

The organization and plan of an employment department, as we have outlined it, is, as we have said, for an institution employing two thousand men and women. For larger organizations, of course, the employment supervisor must have more assistants, there must be more clerks and stenographers, according to the number of employees handled and the character of the work to be done. There are some organizations in which there is very little fluctuation in the personnel. In such cases a small employment department is all that is necessary, even although a large number of employees may be on the payroll. In other kinds of work there is a very large fluctuation, under ordinary conditions, and in such cases it is necessary to have more help in the employment department. In the case of small business, such as retail stores, the employer himself is oftentimes the entire employment department, except for such assistance as he may obtain from a clerk or stenographer. In such a case, also, the records do not need to be so complete and so voluminous, since the proprietor can carry a great deal in regard to each one of his employees in his own mind. We know many executives in large organizations, where employment departments have not been established, who constitute, in themselves, employment departments for their own little corner of the industry. They may have only five or six employees under their care, but they handle them according to scientific principles, analyzing them and their work with just as great care as if there were hundreds of them.

The method, after all, is unimportant. It is the spirit of the work that is all important. It does not matter whether you have a huge force of clerks, assistants, interviewers, and stenographers, or whether you yourself, in your little corner office with your three or four retail clerks as a working force, constitute the whole organization. The spirit of scientific analysis and the fitting of each man to his job in a common sense, sane, practical way, instead of according to out-of-date methods, is the important consideration in the remedy which we present.

In a lecture to the students of the New York Edison Company Commercial School, on January 20, 1915, afterward also presented at the Third Annual Convention of the National Association of Corporation Schools at Worcester, Mass., on June 9, 1915, Herman Schneider, Dean of the College of Engineering of the University of Cincinnati, in discussing "The Problem of Selecting the Right Job," made the following statement:

"2. Physical Characteristics.

"This seems to be a development of the old idea of phrenology. It is claimed in this system that physical characteristics indicate certain abilities. For example, a directive, money-making executive will have a certain shaped head and hand. A number of money-making executives were picked at random and their physical characteristics charted. We do not find that they conform at all to any law. Also, we found men who had physical characteristics that ought to make them executives, but they were anything but executives. A number of tests of this kind gave negative results. We were forced to the conclusion that this system was not reliable."

It is of exceeding great importance for us to know whether the conclusion of Dean Schneider is to be accepted as final. He is a man of high attainment and has done some most remarkable and highly commendable work in connection with continuation schools in the city of Cincinnati. His opinion and conclusion, therefore, are worthy of the most careful consideration.

At first glance, Dean Schneider's method of investigation seems sound and his statement, therefore, conclusive. He examined actual cases; he collected evidence, and he found that physical characteristics were not a reliable guide to aptitudes and character. It is well for us, however, to remember in discussing problems of this kind, that every new scientific discovery has always been rejected by many recognized authorities after what they considered to be careful and convincing tests. Harvey nearly died in trying to maintain his theory of the circulation of the blood; Darwin's theory was insistently repudiated and rejected by many scientific men of his day; Galilo, Columbus, Boillard, the discoverer of the convolution of Broca, and Stevenson, the inventor of the steam locomotive engine, failed to convince the recognized authorities of their times. Gall, who localized the motor functions of the brain, a discovery universally accepted by all brain physiologists today, was laughed out of court by men of the highest scientific authority, who, by experiments, "proved" that he was wrong. So great a mathematician and scientist as Professor Simon Newcomb made the emphatic remark that the dream of flight in a heavier-than-air machine was absurd and would never be realized. The difficulty with all these conclusions lay in the fact that the much-vaunted "proof" was negative in character. Nothing is easier—or more fallacious, logically—than to "prove" that a thing is not so. The difficulty lies in proving that it is so; therefore, logically sound.

According to logicians, conclusions based upon negative premises are inherently unsound. In order to reach reliable conclusions, we must first have all of the essential facts in the case. We question seriously whether this was possible in the course of such a brief investigation as Dean Schneider made. Scientific selection of employees according to the science of character analysis by the observational method was first proposed in the summer of 1912, so that Dean Schneider has had only three years, during which he was much occupied with other duties, in which to make his observations. We only wish here to raise the question as to whether, in that short time, he could obtain all of the facts necessary for reaching a final conclusion. At any rate, other scientists have spent at least fifteen or twenty years in the examination of the same facts before reaching their conclusions.

The method employed as outlined in the paragraph quote does not seem to fulfill all of the necessary requirements of a careful and complete scientific investigation. Take, for example, the test of "directive money-making executives." Would Dean Schneider, or any other engineer, permit a layman, no matter how well qualified otherwise, to examine twenty or thirty different pieces of engineering work for the purpose of determining whether or not they "conform to any law." We acknowledge Dean Schneider's ability as an engineer and as an educator, but