October 25, 2017
Frederick Taylor was a man of his time not a whipping boy for ours
Everybody likes a pantomime villain, and for many commentators on management and office design, they don’t come more dastardly than Frederick W. Taylor. Not only do pictures of him betray him as wealthy, white and starched, his ideas and the language in which they are couched are totally out of step with the way we think now. So for anybody writing about enlightened contemporary management practices, it’s no wonder that it is almost customary to start with a rejection of Taylorism in general and his theory of scientific management in particular. The gist of Taylorism laid out in his 1911 book The Principles of Scientific Management is that work should be analysed to establish the most efficient way of doing it, the right person to do that work must be chosen and managers are there to make sure that it all goes to plan. As far as workers are concerned, what we now think of as Taylorism is best (and partly unfairly) summed up as:‘You’re not paid to think. Shut up and do your job.’
November 6, 2017
Time to address the missed opportunities and wasted resources of the modern workplace
by Chris Moriarty • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design
Rapidly changing work and workplaces. Productivity languishing below optimum levels. Staff engagement well below where it should be. Ongoing recruitment and retention challenges. All this has been building over the last couple of years; it would appear that organisations have never had it so tough. There have been plenty of tough times before, of course, but we have been witnessing something of a ‘perfect storm’ in recent months, where a whole range of issues and developments, as well as advancements and opportunities, have come together to push these challenges up the management agenda. But there are things we can do to make the workplace a better experience for everybody.
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