Topic > The Hawthorne Experiments - 1161

In Roethlisberger's article, he mainly discussed three Hawthorne experiments, which include the "enlightenment" experiments, the "Relay Assembly Test Room" experiment, the employee satisfaction and dissatisfaction interviews and the “Bank Wiring Observation Room” experiment. The purpose of the experiments was to study the effect of environmental conditions, which include physical environmental conditions and psychological factors, on the productivity of workers. Such as the level of lighting, rest breaks, working hours, temperature and humidity.2 In the first test, the “lighting” experiments, the original purpose was to determine the relationship between lighting and worker efficiency. The researchers assumed that increasing the level of lighting could help reduce worker fatigue and increase productivity. Two groups of workers were selected in the study, the “test group” and the “control group”. The brightness of the light was increased and decreased to find out the effect on the productivity of the test group. The researchers were surprised that productivity increased even when the lighting level was reduced. At the conclusion of the first experiment, employee performance was not necessarily related to lighting conditions and some other variables were not controlled for in the test. The increase in productivity was due to the workers receiving attention. In the second test, the “Relay Assembly Test Room” experiment, the researchers wanted to identify how other variables could influence productivity. A group of five girls were placed in a separate room where their working conditions could be carefully monitored and where their performance could be measured. The result showed that the output increased regardless of whether the investigators were in the center of the machine's paper and menu. At first he said he felt good, because he had no difficulty doing the work; he felt happy to earn money with this simple job. However, after two months, he said it was boring going through the same simple process at KFC and felt it was a waste of time to look for a better job. Whatever he did, the job was so great, he said it was just a matter of pushing the button. Nobody cares how good he was, let's hope the leader knows it. I think my friend's situation is one of the reasons why a fast food restaurant can't retain employees that long, and most of the employees are from young people, who don't really care about financial problems, because their parents sometimes they can help them. It's true what Roethlisberger said; people hope to be considered special. They probably consider the benefit, but even money cannot be an absolute reason to maintain the workers' initiative.