It is important, first of all, that proper care be given to 9ie selection of employes. The fourteen-year-old applicant for the office boy's position should be a fu ture executive. He should be examined with that end in mind, and his physical and mental characteristics should be carefully studied. During the last few years much progress has been made in establishing scientific physical tests. Some of the large concerns have installed medical departments for this sole pur pose. The education, home surroundings and future ambition—all of which may be determined by discreet questioning—are also important barometers in helping an employer to judge the ability of a person to per form the work to which he or she is assigned and the probability as to whether the employe is likely to ad vance to a more important position.
Coupled with the selection of employes is the im portance of assigning to them the duties which they are by nature begt fitted to perform. This seems obvi ous, yet how many clerks are at the billing desk when they should be order clerks or entry clerks ? In cases where there is an original examination such as has just been discussed, it is only a matter of carrying the proc ess one step further and determining what qualifica tions are necessary to the performance of a given kind of work. In the mailing department of one of the large publishing houses, for example, it has been proved that an active, nervous girl can turn out more work than a calm, self-contained girl, even tho the lat ter may move decisively.
The welfare movement which had its inception in factories is now being applied to offices as well. In many of the large companies, like the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and the American Tele phone and Telegraph Company, light, airy lunch rooms are provided, where wholesome food is tastily served at low prices. The National City Bank of New York, Spencer Trask & Company and other large companies have provided club rooms, libraries and recreation rooms where office employes may gather after office hours and listen to lectures on busi ness subjects, discuss outings and so on. All these movements should be encouraged and aided by office managers and by the heads of concerns. They stimu late among the employes loyalty, cooperation and an interest in one another which in the long run result in an increased interest in the work.
5. Establishing standards.-0ffice work does not lend itself well to scientific management. Yet it is possible to establish standards and by means of re ports to determine the efficiency of employes. Mar shall Field & Company of Chicago, the Simmons Hardware Company of St. Louis and other concerns have, for instance, placed their typing departments upon an efficient basis in the following manner : By means of a register which records the number of strokes on the typewriter keys they obtain a fairly ac curate record of each girl's output. In other cases
the number of lines (of a given length) , or the number of words, is counted by the chief of the typing de partment. The following is a sample week's record in one of the concerns which use the line method of calculation. The high records were made by opera tors on dictating machines turning out standard para graph letters, while the lower records were made by be ginners or by girls on difficult dictation. The initials in the top row indicate the correspondents who dic tated during the week; the names of the typists appear in the left-hand column: These records form the basis of a bonus system. Any such bonus system must necessarily be elastic and more or less arbitrary. In this particular case the committee which awards the bonuses takes into consid eration the number of lines, the nature of the work and the accidents and other delays reported. The op erators cannot tell in advance just what their bonuses, if any, will be. Their reliance on the fairness and judgment of the committee, however, helps to make the system effective. In addition, the figures posted on a bulletin board arouse a friendly competitive spirit.
Many large concerns have discontinued bonus and piecework systems in the office. The American Law Book Company of New York tried a piecework system but gave it up. So did the Sears, Roebuck Company of Chicago. At one time five hundred clerks in the entry department of this company were paid on a piecework basis, but the plan was found im practicable.
6. Militar,y type of organization.—There are three types of office organization: first, the military t,Te ; second, the functional type ; third, a combination of the military and functional types, which may be termed semi-functional. In the military type, which is the most common, the bead of each department con trols all the work that is performed in the depart ment, irrespective of its character. The sales man ager, for example, not only is provided with assistants for writing to salesmen, for handling mail-order work and for other purely sales activities, but in addition has his own stenographers, typists, statisticians, file clerks, mail clerks and errand boys. The sales department, under these conditions, becomes practically a business office in itself. On the one band, it is credited with sales and on the other hand, it is charged with its ex penses. This is an easy method of determining the exact ratio of sales expense to income. As has al ready been pointed out in an earlier part of this book, however, the military form of organization is obviously inefficient for the sales department, for under such a system this department is forced to perform functions entirely outside its scope. The selling type of mind is different, as a rule, from the type needed for the effi cient regulation of routine.