A planning department which performed its duty would keep the organization in constant working trim; lines of authority and functional activities would be kept clear between officers and departments, and thus the confusion would be obviated that comes from the duplication of work and from the departmental friction which arises where these lines are blurred.
6. Function II: Development of methods.—The office, like the factory, continually presents new prob lems. Methods must be changed to suit exacting conditions. This is not a valid excuse, however, for not adopting some system of standardization. While departments differ from one another in some respects, there are always a number of functions which are common to many or all departments. Standard ization is the reduction of these activities to a common method of performance, and much is gained in the way of efficiency thru such a method.
To provide for improvement in methods as well as to be prepared for changes, the office procedure should be written up in the same way as the routine in the shop and factory. The argument for this procedure is the same as that given for the establishing of rec ords in factory administration. Thus, the planning department by being continually on the alert can keep the records up to date by making changes, giving due consideration to every department which is affected and seeing to it that these standard instructions are lived up to by every department and every person in each department.
7. The office records.—The three prime records of the office, from the planning department's point of view, are the office manual, the special data book and the desk record of instructions. It is easy to recog nize the counterparts of these in the factory.
The office manual is the final authority in office or ganization matters. Herein is described the charac ter of the employment in each department. Its chief contribution from the operative-efficiency point of view lies in the time it saves by placing in the em ployes' hands an authoritative source of information; it obviates the necessity for the executive to take up time and energy in explaining things which have al ready been decided upon. On the other hand, it fur nishes the executive detailed data with reference to his organization; this information is valuable to him as an administrative aid in the adjustment of salaries and promotions pertaining to the class of work each employe performs.
In order that the records may be kept up to date, the data in the office manual must be supplemented by records which show the decisions covering general routine from day to day; these records in some way modify the procedure laid down in the standardized instructions of the manual. This book of memoranda is known as the special data book, and since every de partment must keep one as a record of the particular legislation issued by the executive authority, much confusion can be avoided by checking individual de partmental orders which would run at cross purposes with those of other departments.
The third set of records consists of the individual instruction cards. As the work of specialization goes on in both factory and office, the greater becomes the necessity of clearly defining the duties and describing the activities of the various.production units, whether each unit be a department, a machine, a work bench or an office desk. In the work of standardizing the office, the desk is coming to be recognized as the unit about which certain functions cluster rather than a place where certain individuals work. Accordingly each desk is equipped with a set of instruction cards describing, under subject headings and appropriate subdivisions, the work to be done. As used by the Retail Credit Company of Atlanta, Georgia, these cards are '3 x 5 inches in size, and each clerk carries in a tickler a set pertaining to his desk. When work is even temporarily rearranged, the tickler is placed upon the desk to which the new functions have been transferred. This method standardizes' the work of each desk and of each clerk. The cards are especially valuable in aiding new employes to master their duties, and in furnishing a record of absentees and the work of substitutes during vacations.
It is apparent that specialization of this kind tends to break down the coordination which exists when one rnan performs many functions. The coordinat ing element here is the man himself. When these functions are distributed among several men, it is necessary to supply administrative coordination. Thus, in preparing and improving the records and instructions, and in delegating duties, a planning de partment supplies the needed coordination, since these matters become the special care of a department which looks upon the control of office duties as a serv ice to the whole organization.