Time to Rethink Management
The long-lived Taylorism
When Frederick W. Taylor started his experiment of scientific management with stopwatches at Midvale Steel Company in 1881, he knew clearly that he was fighting with the conscious “soldiering” — the attempt among workers to achieve the least output within the longest amount of time. What he didn’t know was that more than 140 years later, managers would still be facing the same conundrum: how to ensure employees’ productivity under the new work norm.
Frederick W. Taylor is the father of scientific management. The basis of his theory was that companies can use science to simplify roles and build an efficient workforce. He believed that by breaking down employees’ tasks and finding the “one best way” to complete those tasks, a standardized approach could be created and replicated to simplify roles and improve efficiency across the whole organization. Under this belief, Taylor managed to dissect skilled workers’ craftsmanship into mechanical tasks and thus erased the distinction between skilled workers and unskilled ones, which transformed the whole workforce into a replaceable tool base for management. This immediately aroused several waves of strikes among workers. Eventually, the tension was resolved and went away. Later, Taylor’s ideas were popularized and went on to guide countless companies for over a century until new management challenges were presented to us.
Management struggle revived
Taylor managed to provide an actionable framework and principles when productivity was an increasing concern for capitalists. Not only did his scientific management boost productivity, but also ensured managers’ control over employees. However, after reigning for more than 100 years, the power dynamic between employers and employees is changing. A brand new management struggle jumped into the picture when Covid-19 hit us in 2020.
The pandemic changed many things. Remote work was forced into our routine. The face-to-face real-time collaboration pattern was broken. Long-kept habits were shattered and there is no turning back. Because of the pandemic, people were forced to take a breath and ponder the meaning of their relationships, jobs, and even life. They began to face the long-accumulated fatigue and burn-out feeling at work, and reconsider how jobs could be a better fit into their life. Followed was the Great Attrition, which is a result of employees worldwide prioritizing their own mental health and stepping away from triggers of negative feelings like toxic workplace culture, under-recognized performance, and unfulfilling job roles.
As a result, employers start to realize that the old “scientific” way of handling people no longer suffices. Actually, it tends to be counter-productive in many cases, causing a huge loss of talent and harming the company in the future. New requirements for employers were born. Ideas like employee experience, flexibility, well-being, and autonomy have rushed into the spotlight. It seems that management now has a new focus: people. More and more companies are offering benefits like workplace yoga, mental health days off, and flexible working hours to attract talents.
However, when you dive deeper into those buzzwords, you will see that despite employers’ yelling and selling on those benefits and perks, employee engagement level continues to slump. According to Gallup, employee engagement in the U.S first dropped from 36% in 2020 to 34% in 2021, then went down by another two percentage points in early 2022. They also found that employees who enjoy hybrid and remote work are more engaged than on-site workers.
A new debate was born. Should we hold onto our managerial power controlling productivity or shift our focus to employees’ vitality? Should we embrace permanent remote work or drive our employees back to the office? Even the world’s leading companies have submitted extremely different answers. Tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Shopify have embraced remote work as the new norm, while many more companies are enticing or forcing employees to go back to the office. Since April this year, Google stopped allowing most of its employees to work remotely and made it a rule for its Bay Area employees to work in the office at least three days a week. This decision indicates that Google has set its mind on going back to office-based operations. Another example is Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s famous tweet. In May this year, Musk tweeted that COVID-19 stay-at-home measures had “tricked people into thinking they don’t actually need to work hard”. Later, on May 31st, Musk issued an ultimatum to their employees: return to the office full-time or find work elsewhere.
The spectrum of workplace flexibility is just one aspect of our new management challenge. After more than two years of adjusting and experimenting, as the world steadily goes back to normal, leaders worldwide, like Taylor in 1881, are still trying to find the “one best way” to do management.
A new approach worth considering: Human management
The message is loud and clear: we are at a historical crossroads in management and in dire need of a new set of guidelines and frameworks. Our changed reality demands us to redefine scientific management. What is the future of scientific management then? We believe that it is time for human management.
To achieve human management, employers should first ditch the hustle mentality or around-the-clock culture because it won’t work anymore. Employees nowadays are no longer in survival mode. Compared with workers in Taylor’s time, employees nowadays earn way more money. The effort needed to make a living is dramatically cut down. Money as motivation is less strong than it used to be. Plus, when Covid-19 happened, people were forced to re-examine the real sources of happiness in life. Seeking meaning and achievements through a job is no longer a thing for most of them, especially the already-burnt-out millennials and passion-driven Gen-Z.
Employees have been and still are burning out. The latest workplace trend “quiet quitting” that went viral on social media is a great example. The term itself is a misnomer because quiet quitters are not actually quitting their jobs. They are quitting the idea of going the extra mile at work and renouncing hustle culture. The idea soon gained steam, as many employers are pushing workers back to the offices. The resonance that quiet quitting has achieved shows that employees are setting boundaries between work and personal life and defending their time, energy, and identities outside work. Meanwhile, employers should take this as a sign of the severity of employees’ burning out. The global chief people officer at Sedgwick, Michelle Hay says, “It speaks to the tired and frustrated feeling that many are experiencing on the tail end of the pandemic.” Hay continues, “People are reassessing their priorities, and social disconnection can be part of this shift.” Our future management must take into consideration the fact that most of our young workforce are burning out and design a new set of guidelines to tackle this issue.
Moreover, human management should acknowledge some basic human nature, which is that our brains are simply not wired to do the scary, the difficult, and the uncertain. This is why going the extra mile pep talk will be frowned upon in the current work world. Because we are now living in a time when everybody is reflecting on fundamental truths and would love to protect themselves. Whether it’s a toxic workplace culture or a dreary job, for the first time in history, we are prioritizing conserving our energy instead of expanding our territory. Employees have already had enough of this kind of fancy wording created to exploit them. They don’t need another 5% pay raise at the end of a one-year marathon. They have shaken off the idea of ladder climbing and just want to be celebrated as tired, imperfect, comfort-seeking human beings. In a world of chaos and stress, most employees nowadays will choose without hesitation to stay in a job that brings self-confidence and ease over a job that requires stepping outside of your comfort zone on a daily basis. This doesn’t mean that employers should just leave employees alone and let them slack. Instead, managers should shift their focus from productivity to individuality.
Individuality in management is two folded. To begin with, it’s essential for employers to treat employees as human beings with strengths and flaws, not another batch of cogs in the machine. For employees today, experience at work, mental health, and healthy workplace culture, these rank higher than good pay. Furthermore, when reshaping management, we should emphasize the suitability of employees’ positions. Instead of scratching our heads for the one best way to do management, how about helping each employee to find their most suitable job role? The work we do occupies most of our time within office hours. It is the biggest source of happiness, stress, anxiety, and anger. Giving each employee the most suitable job is the best way to boost employee satisfaction, rather than longer tea breaks, more fitness facilities, or an array of snacks and beverages. Suitability not only foresees autonomy but is the prerequisite for future productivity and engagement.
The future starts now
With new challenges and threats at bay, monitoring everything is not the answer to long-term prosperity. For companies around the world, management is still to ensure productivity. However, to truly make a change, it’s time to rethink our mindset and find a new approach that responds to employees’ newly formed needs and still contemplating questions. By starting to acknowledge some brutal facts and shifting our focus to individuality, we will see that now is the threshold of a brand new era. The future belongs to human management and it still bears plentiful fruits as long as we head in the right direction from now.
Reference:
- https://www.economist.com/news/2009/02/09/scientific-management
- https://libcom.org/article/stopwatch-and-wooden-shoe-scientific-management-and-industrial-workers-world
- https://www.gallup.com/workplace/391922/employee-engagement-slump-continues.aspx?utm_source=linkedinbutton&utm_medium=linkedin&utm_campaign=sharing
- https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/03/02/google-to-end-work-from-home-option-for-most-bay-area-workers/
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/21/quiet-quitting-what-to-know/
- https://www.npr.org/2022/08/19/1117753535/quiet-quitting-work-tiktok
- https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/evolution-made-our-brains-lazy/
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