TradeSchoolTeacher
Electrical
- Jun 9, 2006
- 3
BEST PRACTICES UPDATE: TENANTS
Every air conditioning man serving commercial and office buildings knows the value of placating and massaging the egos of clients and tenants who are complaining about the a/c system. We have learned that going in with our psychometric thermometers atwirl and making small adjustments to supply registers usually solves the problem--for awhile--until the complainer has another adverse situation which can be conveniently blamed on the climate conditioning.
We have become the placebo medication for their job dissatisfaction. This is not to say that all their complaints are imaginary, some are, some aren't. But in either case, looking up their room temperature on a computer monitor in the basement and then phoning to say that the problem has been taken care of (perhaps by tweaking the temp a degree or two) almost always serves no purpose because that's not what they want. They want someone to come to their office and pay attention to them. This was amply demonstrated by the GE corporation in the 1920's in a lighting study.
General Electric, the major manufacturer of light bulbs, had preliminary evidence that better lighting of the work place improved worker productivity, but wanted to validate these findings to sell more light bulbs, especially to businesses. GE funded the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an impartial study. AT&T's Western Electric Hawthorne plant located in Cicero, Illinois, was chosen as the laboratory. Beginning with this early test, the "Hawthorne Experiments" were a series of studies into worker productivity performed at the Cicero plant beginning in 1924 and ending in 1932.
The earliest experiment was conducted by the NRC with engineers from MIT. The study ended in 1927 with the NRC abandoning the project. The group examined the relationship between light intensity and worker efficiency. The idea was that greater illumination would yield higher productivity. Two work groups of employees were selected for "control" and "experimental" groups. By comparing the changes on worker productivity by manipulating lighting in the experimental group with the production of the control group, the researchers could validate and measure the impact of lighting.
In a nutshell, when the lighting was increased, efficiency went up. So they increased the lighting even more, and the productivity achieved goals that management thought were unattainable. A further increase in lighting brought even greater results. GE was ecstatic. In a daring move, they started to reduce the lighting, expecting productivity to decline, but just the opposite happened. Productivity increased again. So they reduced the lighting to below the level it was before the experiment, and productivity soared even higher.
Why did this happen? Any air conditioning man (or woman) could explain it. While the experiment was going on, the researchers paid a great deal of attention to the workers, inquiring about the work, asking how the lighting was, in short, making the workers feel important. It was those actions that caused the increase in productivity. (And was subsequently proven by the steady decline in productivity after the experiment even though the lighting levels were kept high.) This is the same service that air conditioning departments provide. If they don't do this particular job well, they suffer by getting poor reviews and dissatisfied clients and tenants.
Incidentally and unfortunately, the sociological academic community has decided to attribute the Hawthorne Effect to a desire by the test subjects to please the so-called scientific observers. This egocentric attitude on their part has impeded social research ever since and effectively skews what could otherwise be helpful behavioral data into hopeless gobbledegook. This is not to say that there is not useful research which produces insightful data. The latest in this latter vein was published in the British Medical Journal on February, 1, 2006 and was the subject of a column by Jessica Ruvinsky in the magazine DISCOVER in the April 2006 issue and may be viewed on the net at
Every air conditioning man serving commercial and office buildings knows the value of placating and massaging the egos of clients and tenants who are complaining about the a/c system. We have learned that going in with our psychometric thermometers atwirl and making small adjustments to supply registers usually solves the problem--for awhile--until the complainer has another adverse situation which can be conveniently blamed on the climate conditioning.
We have become the placebo medication for their job dissatisfaction. This is not to say that all their complaints are imaginary, some are, some aren't. But in either case, looking up their room temperature on a computer monitor in the basement and then phoning to say that the problem has been taken care of (perhaps by tweaking the temp a degree or two) almost always serves no purpose because that's not what they want. They want someone to come to their office and pay attention to them. This was amply demonstrated by the GE corporation in the 1920's in a lighting study.
General Electric, the major manufacturer of light bulbs, had preliminary evidence that better lighting of the work place improved worker productivity, but wanted to validate these findings to sell more light bulbs, especially to businesses. GE funded the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an impartial study. AT&T's Western Electric Hawthorne plant located in Cicero, Illinois, was chosen as the laboratory. Beginning with this early test, the "Hawthorne Experiments" were a series of studies into worker productivity performed at the Cicero plant beginning in 1924 and ending in 1932.
The earliest experiment was conducted by the NRC with engineers from MIT. The study ended in 1927 with the NRC abandoning the project. The group examined the relationship between light intensity and worker efficiency. The idea was that greater illumination would yield higher productivity. Two work groups of employees were selected for "control" and "experimental" groups. By comparing the changes on worker productivity by manipulating lighting in the experimental group with the production of the control group, the researchers could validate and measure the impact of lighting.
In a nutshell, when the lighting was increased, efficiency went up. So they increased the lighting even more, and the productivity achieved goals that management thought were unattainable. A further increase in lighting brought even greater results. GE was ecstatic. In a daring move, they started to reduce the lighting, expecting productivity to decline, but just the opposite happened. Productivity increased again. So they reduced the lighting to below the level it was before the experiment, and productivity soared even higher.
Why did this happen? Any air conditioning man (or woman) could explain it. While the experiment was going on, the researchers paid a great deal of attention to the workers, inquiring about the work, asking how the lighting was, in short, making the workers feel important. It was those actions that caused the increase in productivity. (And was subsequently proven by the steady decline in productivity after the experiment even though the lighting levels were kept high.) This is the same service that air conditioning departments provide. If they don't do this particular job well, they suffer by getting poor reviews and dissatisfied clients and tenants.
Incidentally and unfortunately, the sociological academic community has decided to attribute the Hawthorne Effect to a desire by the test subjects to please the so-called scientific observers. This egocentric attitude on their part has impeded social research ever since and effectively skews what could otherwise be helpful behavioral data into hopeless gobbledegook. This is not to say that there is not useful research which produces insightful data. The latest in this latter vein was published in the British Medical Journal on February, 1, 2006 and was the subject of a column by Jessica Ruvinsky in the magazine DISCOVER in the April 2006 issue and may be viewed on the net at
