MAYO AND THE HAWTHORNE EXPERIMENTS
Use in conjunction with Theory 26 to identify the factors that actually motivate staff.
In the late 1920s, Elton Mayo and his team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology carried out a series of experiments with manual workers at General Electric’s Hawthorne Plant. The results seemed to defy the received wisdom of the time and continue to be of interest today.
THE HAWTHORNE RESEARCHERS FOUND THAT:
There was no correlation between productivity and working conditions. Productivity went neither up nor down significantly when conditions were either degraded or improved.
Belonging to a group was the single most important motivational factor. Staff found status and a sense of belonging within the group. They feared being excluded from the group or letting their mates down with shoddy work and did everything they could to be seen as a ‘good un’. Often these groups were informal in nature and yet they exercised enormous influence over the behaviour of members.
Productivity increased as a result of the researchers and management talking to the staff, asking for their views and treating them as individuals and not just hired hands. Effectively, treating staff with respect and as intelligent individuals paid dividends.
HOW TO USE IT
- Recognise that working conditions by themselves have very little effect on motivation or productivity. Only when they fall below an acceptable level do they demotivate staff (see Theory 26).
- Knowing that staff are more motivated when they belong to a group is a key piece of information. Yes, you want your staff to work as one team, but also encourage them to form separate mini groups, because smaller groups exercise greater influence over their members. It’s not by chance that the basic operating unit of the SAS is four troopers.
- Whenever possible encourage good-natured competition between the mini groups. To avoid things getting too serious offer a trophy of no particular value to the ‘best team’ each month.
- Now that you know that productivity increases when managers talk to staff, get out of your office and indulge in a bit of Management by Walking About (see Theory 7). If possible, get senior managers to talk to your staff. This is easily done. Instead of having a private briefing from your boss or director on the organisation’s latest strategy, ask them to brief you and your team together (always assuming that nothing confidential is involved). When they have left, you can answer any questions that your team have.
- Everyone wants to feel valued. We spend most of our waking life at work and we need to believe that it has a purpose. So treat people with respect, as intelligent individuals, and watch productivity grow.
QUESTIONS TO ASK
- How much do I know about the people who work for me?
- Do I encourage staff to talk to me about their ambitions and problems?