Group, Pair, or Individual Work

Working in Teams vs. in Pairs or Singly

By Rom Antony Day

Friday, December 14, 2007

“Men will not do anything like one-half the work if they are herded together as they will when working in pairs or singly. … pretty soon it is a catch to see who is the slowest. This was the experience of two ore shovelers when relocated to work for a higher contingency payment on the per tone of ore shoveled. They did not know they were going to be thrown up in a herd of between 10 (ten) and 12 (twelve) shovellers where when one man stopped to spit on his hand, another begun to look at him and thought, that bugger is loafing. I will keep my eye on him. He is not doing as much as I do, decreasing his output to the lowest ratio of the loafer. Thereby the matching of who went the slowest, decreasing the ROI (Return-On-Investment) for all, begun”(Frank Barkley Copley; Frederick W. Taylor Father of Scientific Management; Volume II, 1923 and reprinted 1969; library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 68-55515 pg 71 to pg 75).

Therefore the two man who thought were going to a higher earning employer did not earn as much as they did at their previous where men no longer are submerged in gangs, but are individualized ((Frank Barkley Copley; Frederick W. Taylor Father of Scientific Management; Volume II, 1923 and reprinted 1969; library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 68-55515; pg 73).

The result: Taylor specially trained ore shovelers whom had been taken from him by a Pittsburgh steal company came back to Taylor s company because they could earn more in the individualized compensation system based on scientific management.

Taylor had told his men about the higher compensation as to not keep them from what appeared to be a greener grass (i.e. a better opportunity); he always kept their best interest in mind; and thus he advised them to see the other employer with whom they went and later on in a matter of two (2) to four (4) weeks resigned from. This approach to not keeping blinders on his employees from better opportunities is, according to Frank Barkley Copley in his book Frederick W. Taylor: Father of Scientific Management, a particularly fine example of Taylor s gift for the dramatic and incidentally workings of his Yankee mind (page 73). Why did they return to Frederick Taylor because the pluses did not out-weight the minuses of what we might now refer to as teaming-up without the individualistic spirit of personal responsibility for specific, measurable, attainable, real and tangible results (SMART) which are measured.