Industrial psychology : its scope and effect on efficiency abstract of lecture / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Industrial psychology : its scope and effect on efficiency abstract of lecture / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of work ? Yet how little provision is made for training the worker scientifically! In vocational training the mental differences of workers are so great that different methods of instruction must be employed for the different members of a group being trained. Some may learn from a diagram or from a wire model of the movement ; others need to see the movement carried out; others again need to carry them out themselves. The problems of such important individual mental differences is the special concern of industrial psychology. I need hardly lay stress on the immense importance of utilising the best means at our disposal in vocational guidance and vocational selection. What a wastage of time, money and happiness arises from the wrong peg everlastingly trying to fit into the wrong hole, and passing by trial and error through a variety of different holes, until at length one is found which the peg fits ! The employee becomes discontented and discouraged ; he loses heart, self-confidence and happiness ; while the employer wastes time and expense in training the employee to work at which he will never do well. If a man is fitted to his work, not only is he happier and more efficient at it, but his health is better and thus the sickness records of the factory are improved. Moreover, the wastage through workers leaving because they are unfitted for their job becomes enormously reduced. The methods of vocational testing are broadly three in number. The first is the method of “ sample ” tests ; these involve a task which is a sample of that at which the candidate will be subsequently engaged in his occupation. The second method of testing is by means of “ analogous ” tests. In order to examine workers applying to be engaged on feeding machines, Link devised a gramophone box, provided with a large horizontal metal disc having a sector of variable size cut in it, which when passing a certain spot would allow a shot to pass through. The candidate had to try to drop the shot through while the disc revolved. Some workers did better with slow, and others with a fast revolving disc, corresponding to their occupational efficiency, some doing better with fast and others better with slow machines.