PLANNING THE CLERICAL WORK 1. Office systems often haphazard.—Every office is started with a plan; but business undertakings, if they prove successful, are likely to grow rapidly, necessi tating a rapid expansion of the office. Sooner or later the office system breaks under the strain, and again the work of the office is planned. This second planning is usually spoken of as a "reorganization," since several old employes lose their positions, a few new partitions are run up, a new filing system is adopted, and so on. Again the planning ceases and the office goes on its way until a new catastrophe calls attention to "needed improvements." Thus most offices today are made up of accretions of clerks, ma chines, desks and departments to which very little at tention has been given so far as a studied division of the work is concerned.
A few years ago it was generally thought that all the ills of office administration could be cured by additions of new machines, or a new "system," but as the size of the business increased, the number and va riety of machines and the complexity of the systems became problems in themselves. To solve these prob lems "systematizers" were engaged to straighten out the tangled mass of activities and equipment. As in the case of most betterment movements of this kind, the investigators began at the wrong end by trying to adjust some special system to new conditions with out a thoro study of the local requirements ; or else they made an equally 'grievous blunder in supposing that the system when once installed would run of it self. It did not take long for "system" in both Eng land and America to become associated with "fad dism" and quackery.
Here and there, however, a large insurance com pany, a bank or a big mail-order house began to study its office problems scientifically. By such study, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company discovered that a contract could be handled in two or three hours instead of as many days. The Fourth National Bank of New York made similar reductions in the time necessary to handle the thecks coming in thru the mail. And the National Cloak and Suit Company
by means of a series of time-studies was able to route its orders thru the office on a regular time-schedule permitting orders to be attended to the same day they are received. But systems such as these require con stant attention. Spasmodic planning is not enougli.
2. Working toward functional control in the of fice.—To provide for the constant changes which are taking place, some of the larger companies employ an office manager whose sole duty is to watch and plan the office Work. He may be given assistants, but the scheme does not provide for a regular department IV-13 where planning is the chief function; the idea that the manager is the "boss" is a minor consideration. Other companies attempt to modify this purely mili tary form of office organization by introducing some form of the suggestion system. But here again the responsibility for definite and continuous planning is lacking, and the only contribution in this direction offered by the suggestion box is a series of spasmodic suggestions—sometimes called "constructive" be cause the manager has given so little attention to the real nature of his office that everything which emerges above the mediocrity of daily routine "looks good" to him.
Still other concerns move a step further in the di rection of functional control by adopting some form of the committee system of management. But here, as in the suggestion system, the watching and study necessary to correct the organization perspective is lacking. The committee system has its peculiar merits but it cannot take the place of careful, thought ful planning.
3. Planning department for the office.—The most recent development in the field of office management is the planning department. This development is in line with a similar movement for a more refined spe cialization in administration and a closer control of functional activities in factory and shop.