How far would you push yourself at work for the sake of a higher wage? Would you justify extra effort with a higher paycheck? If your only motivation was money, then perhaps you would. Maybe you already are.

You may have heard of Frederic Taylor (1856-1915), American inventor and engineer.

Taylor believed that “works consist mainly of simple, not particularly interesting tasks” and “the only way to get people to do them is to incentivise them properly and monitor them carefully”.

Scientific Management Theory

“Workers are lazy, uneducated and motivated only by money.”

It’s a bold statement by Taylor, who was no stranger to Mcgregor’s Theory X and Theory Y.

Fundamental principles of Scientific Management (Taylorism):

• All processes should be broken down into small, simple tasks
• Workers should be given relevant training and tools to carry out tasks most efficiently
• Performance should be constantly measured
• Workers should be paid according to their performance (qty produced)
• Work should be equally split between workers and managers

Businesses followed Taylor’s approach to increasing productivity. However, workers expressed frustration and anger. They blamed new practices for the boredom of tasks, increased supervision and hard targets. It all led to Federal Government investigation.

Fast forward to Today

Scientific Management has evolved and is still widely used by businesses today. Take Amazon as an example.  However, we should take into account the human factor. At some point, pushing workers to the limit can backfire. The challenge is to evaluate the role of the human in the process and implement changes. Is full automation of processes inevitable? I guess we all know the answer.