Are You Happy In Your Work ?

Cue (NZERS), Issue 14, 31 December 1944, Page 17

Are You Happy In Your Work ?

A JOB for everyone, and everyone in his right job, the job in which he can get most satisfaction for himself and be most valuable to the community. Can we do anything to achieve this? Providing work for everyone is over to the politician and the economist. This article is about finding the right job. Have you ever thought about this important matter?

The hiring and firing of labour has in the past been a very casual matter, a curious state of affairs often due to the one-sided blindness of the "hardheaded” business manhard-headed in more senses than one. Its funny, when you think it over, that a man who is prepared to spend days carefully assessing the relative merits of two machines for his works, is quite content to select the worker to operate those machines by what is really a mass method.

But that is generally what happens; the hiring of the machine is in the hands of experts; the hiring of the man is left to chance. In one big works in America, the hiring of labour was left to a foreman. When he was asked what his system was, he replied, ’’Well on Monday I hire all red-heads, on Tuesday all those with blue eyes, and so on. But of course some days I have a grouch and don’t hire any at all.” And that at a guess is more system than most people in the labour selection game have.

But before we ’’sling off” at manufacturers and their habits, let us have a look at our own methods of getting a job —the other side of the labour picture. Take the case of a boy leaving school and going to work for the first time. Why does he select a particular job? Sometimes because his dad tells him to go into it; sometimes because relatives are in the business and can give him a start; sometimes because a cobber is with the same crowd; sometimes because it happens to be available, because he sees a small ad. in the

’’Dominion” or ’’The Press;” sometimes because he thinks on inadequate evidence he would like it; often because

he thinks that there is good money in it.

The job he gets as a result is seldom the one in which his. own particular talents would have most scope. As a result, in ten or twenty years time he has ’’had” that jobbut it is then too late to start all over again. It looks as though we ought to have a bit more system somewhere, because the man who dislikes his work is likely to be a cause of unnecessary industrial unrest.

We work for two reasons. First of all, we work because we have to get a living. That is, of course, the most obvious reason for working, but it is not the only reason. If you have ever been unlucky enough to be unemployed for a period, you will know that the financial difficulties are not the only drawback to that unenviable state. Leisure is . good in small doses but too much of it ruins a man. Some sort of work suits some people better than others. Some like mechanical jobs, some like office jobs, some prefer to work out-of-doors. So that there is another reason for working—we may work at a particular- job because we like it. The lucky individual gets a job which both gives him a good wage and in- s

terests him. Most people in New Zealand achieve either one or the other. Some, of course, get

neither. The two factors are interlocked , for we are more likely to do well in a job in which we are interested than in one which we find . dull. We are therefore more likely to be successful financially in a job we like than in one we do not like.

What can we do to find a square hole for the square peg in industry ?

Vocational guidance experts like to think in their less cynical moments that if we really got down to it, we could find a suitable and attractive job for everyone, and that we could hand cut the world’s work in such a way that everyone would be satisfied.

There are, of course, jobs which do not have much appeal to most people; but perhaps, somewhere there lurks the

ideal garbage collector and the man who longs to be a professional "spud barber.” Why not? Perhaps if Adolph had been a happy house painter we might have been, spared a lot of trouble in the past five years.

But enough of the pipe dreams now for a few facts. All men are not equal even though they should be provided with equal opportunities. Each of us comes into the world - with different abilities which are part of our make-up, just as much as our physical build. First of all, we differ in intelligence. x No one knows exactly what intelligence is but everyone knows how it works. Those who have better

intelligence do better at school and generally, end up in- better jobs, other things being equal. Intelligence seems to be a sort of general, ability to understand things and to find the answer to problems.

During the past' thirty years, tests have been devised by psychologists for measuring intelligence and these have now been brought to a reasonable degree of perfection. We can predict from them the degree of . scholastic success that a given child is likely to have, and we can tell, too, what jobs are likely to be beyond his powers and what jobs will be too easy for him. It is important, -by the way, that we should not let him get into a job that requires fewer brains than he has got. khat is quite as quick a road to dissatisfaction as encouraging him in a job which he cannot measure up to.

As well as intelligence, we each have also in a more or less marked degreeother specialised aptitudes, most important of which in this mechanical age are our mechanical and , manual aptitudes We all know that there are some people who seem to be able to grasp easily what makes the wheels go round and that there are others to whom the innards of their car, their clock and their vacuum cleaner will be forever a mystery. We know too that some are natural bush carpenters, others are ’ham-handed” at everything they tty to do. For these aptitudes there are tests, too, not quite so well developed as intelligence tests, but of very considerable value. There will be more tests and better ones as research gets going. They are even now a better short-cut to a man’s industrial prospects than the old methods of trial and error, resulting in wasted time and often in wasted lives. Some people sneer at tests of human aptitudes, largely, probably, because they are afraid of them. The answer to them is first, that they cannot deny that aptitudes exist and exist in varying quantities, second, that if they exist in varying. quantities they can be measured, and, finally, that the present .tests, even if not perfect, go a long way towards measuring some of them. Anyway, if you think you are concealing successfully a lack of intelligence, you do hot have to be tested!

These aptitudes are only a very small part of the human picture. Unlike the insect which

starts off in full working order, the human infan is born in a very helpless condition. He has aptitudes, the potentiality for doing things, but he has very ew abilities or skills. These have to e learned. The young of the human species go through a longer period o training than those of any ° animal. By the time a boy comes to look for a job, he has gone throug

fourteen c ; eighteen years of education. What he has learned during that period naturally determines his fitness for a particular line, not only from - the point of view of formal education (reading, writing, arithmetic and all that) but, what is even more important, from the point of view of personality and interests. We must take all this experience and its results into account when we are trying to find the most suitable job for him, for we cannot in many cases afford to re-educate an adult whose education has been faulty or misdirected. We have to try sometimes where a case of hopeless maladjustment occurs, but it is not usually practical politics to try. With further development of education, we ought to be able to avoid this by observation and direction from an early-age.

The abilities and aptitudes are fairly well catered for by tests, but in personality we have come up against a hard nut to crack and it is not cracked yet, though there are some hopeful signs around.

We have at last accumulated a few "don’ts” in assessing personality and temperament. 'We can say to the business man and other employers ”You can’t judge character from a photograph, you can't judge character from handwriting; you can’t judge character in a five minute interview.” Not that the average employer takes any notice; he still goes' on asking for a photograph and relying on his own snap judgments but we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that he is wrong.

While we are doing a bit of destruction in this , area of human thought we may as well wipe phrenology and palmistry and throw out astrology at the same time. None of them has measured up to scientific tests yet — but vocational guidance officers are still willing to try them out as well as any other quack methods that come along. Tests of personality v traits are still in their infancy, but a fair idea of a man’s personality can be obtained by

getting careful opinio from five or six people who know him well. When we have found out as much as we can about the aptitudes, skills, personality and temperament of our man, we are then in a position to make an attempt at finding the most suitable job for him. We do not know enough yet to hit the nail on the head' all the timethirty years is not long in the history of a science. We do know enough to be streets ahead of the haphazard methods now normally adopted. On the whole we can find the employer a more suitable employee and we can find satisfactory jobs, for many people who might otherwise have drifted.

What has all this vocational guidance to do with us? We have all left school and we have almost all had a civilian job ' already. Some of us , have been lucky and have a job to go back to after the war which

we like and which brings in a sufficiency of shekels. Some of us on the other hand are not

satisfied with what we were doing before the war.

It has already been said that it is not easy- during normal times to reeducate someone who has got up the wrong alley. It is particularly difficult with older men who are maimed and. have responsibilities, who are not able to go back to an apprentice's wage or to support themselves during a course of training.

Fortunately, for those who are in this position, the rehabilitation scheme offers a loophole which does riot exist in normal times.

There will be an opportunity for some who before the war were in jobs which were unsatisfactory to them, to train for more suitable jobs. The barrier, which usually prevents a change for those over twentyfive, is partly lifted for the returned soldier. So vocational guidance does concern some people not so far from here.