Business Consultant On Work Unrest

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32266, 8 April 1970, Page 16

Business Consultant On Work Unrest

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, April 7. New Zealand’s current industrial unrest is largely the healthy reaction of workers to an unhealthy environment created by bad management, according to a Wellington business consultant.

Addressing a Rotary meeting at Johnsonville last night, the managing director of Management Resources, Ltd (Mr R. H. Borland) said wage matters were an important element of discontent but emphasised that these were often a symptom rather than the basic cause of the problem.

“In my opinion, the last thing New Zealand workers can be accused of is laziness or greed, but this is all too often what employers seize on to explain away troubles which are really of their own making,” he said. Commenting on reported exchanges last week between the president of the Federa tion of Labour (Mr T. E. Skinner) and the president of the Manufacturers’ Federation (Mr J. S. Osborne) about wages and profits, Mr Borland said Mr Osborne was quite right in challenging Mr Skinner’s contention that wages comprised only one-third ot costs.

Although the ratio varied from firm to firm, it was in fact nearer to 60 per cent of the total. , On the other hand, he added, Mr Osborne only partially dealt with the profits problem.

“As Mr Osborne says, profits may not be so high here as the country needs. But they could be a great deal higher than they are if em-

ployers made a better fist of managing their workers.” Mr Borland said that if top executives spent as much time and effort on properly informing and motivating their staffs as they did on socalled “scientific planning” they would get greater cooperation and, through that, achieve higher efficiency and profitability for their businesses.

“Despite the benefits of 40 years of research on human behaviour at their disposal, the overwhelming majority of companies continue to manage the daylights out of the plant and financial half of their assets, while thinking of the people half as a luxury or frill,” he said.

‘"’’he gap in mutual understanding caused by this attitude is hittint us now. And it is likely to get worse if mnagement doesn’t buck its ideas up.” . Exp:-"sing faith m the view that most adults, especially in New Zealand, were basically responsible, selfreliant and independent, Mr Borland accused what he termed “the typical company” of confining ’ts employees to roles which provided little or no opportunity for the exercise of these qualities. The younger worker of today in particular, e ger to make constructive use of a good edm-’ticu, ueeded to : e given responsibility a* an early age to feel personally committed to a chosen course of action or policy, he said. F ed at present, however, by auto itic hangover of last century’s industrial revolution when employees, likn

children, were to be seen and not -hea~i, they resign themselves to the infantile role expected of them and withdraw their interest from the job. “As the only defence they know against frustrations experienced in this way, and to preserve their self-respect, they tret v .k just as a big joke -to be regarded at best with indifference and at worst with contempt.

“The phenomenon is known sometimes as “on-the-job retirement.” Ultimately, it will show up in a company’s records as lower output, lower quality, exce.sive waste and high staff turnover.” Holding Pay Unenlightened managements’ usual answer to the joint inroads by these factors and inflation into profits was to panic and tighten costs. In practice, this really meant cutting or at least holding rates of pay and urging people to produce more—“in spite of the fact that many such companies are already under-staffed, except at the top.” All too often, the most productive way to reduce costs—by increasing job satisfaction and so eliminating the wastage of apathy or high staff turnover —was completely neglected. He claimed that failure to keep their people in the picture provided fertile breeding grounds for industrial unrest.

Once the rot set in among one group of employees it quickly spread through all others, and at all levels. “Wage claims themselves are often merely the outward sign of smouldering resentments of a far more deeplyrooted nature,” said Mr Borland.

“Pay is regarded unconsciously as a kind of fine to be levied periodically by workers against employers for their failure to make jobs stimulating or dignifying.”