PSYCHOLOGY IN INDUSTRY

Evening Star, Issue 21890, 29 November 1934, Page 1

PSYCHOLOGY IN INDUSTRY

THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE LIGHTENING LABOUR More efficient machinery as an aid to increased production and reduced overhead costs is a phenomenon j familiar to all as a direct result of the Industrial Revolution, but it is only comparatively recently that the possibilities have been visualised of using artificial stimuli of a psychological nature to enhance the efficiency of man himself. In the former case it. is a matter of machinery replacing man by, enabling one to do the work that was formerly done by ten, twenty, a hundred, or more, but in the latter man is enabled to do more work of a consistently superior quality with less expenditure of physical, and even of mental, energy. Few yet realise the extent to which' this science has already been developed, and fewer still how extensive a factor it is likely to become in our lives in the future. An official of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology gave to a representative of the Observer ’ an indication of the nature of its possibilities, .and described many actual cases in which it has been fruitfully put into practical use. “ The main irend of the research that has been done, and\the Jeadidg conclusion to be drawn from our very varied experience,”-he said, “is that psychology can be applied to industry to ameliorate the conditions of the workers and at the same time to make their tasks easier to perform. Such improvements are not, as one might at first imagine, attended by a drop in production, but, on the contrary, a marked improvement in output capacity, thus showing that the change benefits not only the employee, but both parties concerned. The significance of this principle can obviously be best; illustrated by taking a fewactual examples which have come to our notice.

TEDIUM AND OUTPUT. “ One of the main fallacies which have i been exploded by the industrial psychologist is that which' the ammunition factories in the war did so much to foster—that long, uninterrupted hours of work make for a correspond- . ingly higher output. It can be.definitely shown that there is in actual fact' a marked, if unconscious, tendency to restrict output during a long, tedious spell of _ work. Another way of stating the position is to say that there is-an. instinctive attempt to store up as much energy as possible to combat over-fatigue. "rf . “Of v the many suitable examples that could be cited in support .of this statement one of the ■.’most appropriate whicl| occurs to- my , mind concerns a’ chemical works in Germany in which . Saturday work was ‘abolished and the number of working hours reduced from fifty a week to forty-two. Six, to eight weeks after the change the output in the forty-two-hour week was practically as high as, and in the case of one-department, actually higherthan, in_ the fifty-hour week. ‘ 1 A similar case of a rather different type was provided by a survey of the number of absentees among nearly, 5,000 women employees in eighteen cotton mills. It revealed that those working a fifty-five-hour week lost thirteen more days in the year' than those working only a forty-eight-hour week. PRESENTATION OP WORK.

“ The. way in which the employee has his work presented' to him,, too, has a far more important influence on his output' than is at present generally realised. We had a very interesting case of this in a jam factory l in which the workers had to pick and \ sort currants. They were given a stone at a time, and l it was found that town rd.= the end of the morning they became tired and bored. We decided - upon the experiment of supplying them with only half a stone at a time. The outcome was even more astounding than we could have anticipated; the output was immediately doubled! The improvement was due to the fact that the sorting of the larger quantity, of fruit appeared to be'an interminable task, and the workers were accordingly overcome by tho tedium o£ the job. In the case of the smaller quantity the prospect of the change of having the work checked off made it seem that there was some relief in sight. _ _ _ , “ Lighting, heating, ventilation', ' noise, and other conditions governing the worker’s physical surroundings also have a vastly important influence on his production capacityln the case of a printing works this was ’ demonstrated by a comparison of the work clone under daylight and under artificial light of varying intensities. An illumination of. two foot candles ga,re 25 per cent, less output and 100 more errors than under daylight conditions. (A foot candle is the illumination received at a point one foot distant from a source or qne candle-power.) At seven foot candles there was 10 per, cent, less output, and a slight increase in errors. When the illumination was increased to twenty foot candles _ it was found that, _ for periods during which, artificial lighting was used in , the winter, the daylight rate of working and the daylight accuracy could be maintained. NOISE AND ACCURACY. “In a telephone office a 10 per cent, reduction of noise effected a decrease of 42 per cent, in the number of errors, and a reduction in the cost per telephone. conversation. “ ’there is a tendency in factories to ascribe accidents to carelessness or inattention when they are really due to ' some nnperceived environmental factor. A very striking example of this is afforded by a firm employing 1,000 workers, which formerly had ani accident rate of 400 a year, costing in compensation and medical fees over £3,000, Modernisation of the lighting by installing approved reflectors and more suitable location of the lighting points was inaugurated. Although this involved an increase of £SOO in electrical consumption the number of accidents dropped by some 250, and the compensation payments were reduced by more than £1,500. “ In many cases, of course, incompetence at work is due not to carelessness and stupidity, but to psychoneu- . rosis, which means that the person in question is employed in the wrong type of work.”