Efficiency Methods
An Introduction to Scientific Management

132 EFFICIENCY METHODS trative developments which were the direct outcome of the installation of the scheme in the English firm. Schloss notes specifically the necessity for careful inspection, for fixing what is called the reference rate ” permanently, “ except where method is changed,” and for communicating it to the workmen at the beginning. Also the advisability of calculat- ing the time for work individually, not on a gang basis, and of paying the bonus weekly, not delaying it. The objection that book-keeping and cost- keeping would be complicated was met by the firm exactly as Taylor met it, by pointing out that labour costs in any case ought to be ascertained carefully and in detail. But in studying premium-bonus systems we are interested chiefly in the principle on which the bonus is given. The standard work or time mentioned above “ was determined,” Halsey says, but deter- mined in the old-fashioned general manner, not by any study of the elements of the work. The peculiar fact about the calculation of the reward is that the workman is not given the whole profit due to his extra exertion; he is asked to share that profit with his employer. Sometimes he is told that he will get half of it; sometimes that he will get one- third. Very occasionally on certain jobs it might be admitted that he was entitled to the whole, but much more commonly the management contends that he is entitled to very little, as the increased output is due to better arrangements, and causes him no extra exertion.