Roy Gaynor, Managing Director of management consultants' training and support network, Navisys Academy explains how he implemented a successful and innovative bonus scheme within a factory and why he feels anarchy has a place in management methodology.

I stumbled into HR management, starting out as an industrial engineer, concerned with how work was organised.

Part of my role was to create bonus schemes. I did this by timing everything that could be, using a stop watch or predetermined synthetic times. It was very much based on a theory X approach to management. Also prevalent at the time was the debate surrounding ‘unitary or pluralistic frames of reference’; which was a posh way of asking if capital and labour (managers and managed) could ever regard the world and nature of work from the same perspective.

Policy dictated that industrial engineers timed how long things should take, worked out how many people were needed to efficiently man a process and then create a bonus scheme that would incite these people to produce peak performance. Managers would then ‘sell’ the new times or scheme to the workforce via their trade union representatives. At least that was the objective view of what was happening.

The cultural reality was that the well rehearsed negotiation roles in this drama were really there to provide both managers and trade union officials with power over the people who were doing the work.

The operational reality was that the people who did the work could drive a cart and horse through the agreed time standards. On the occasions that ‘job and finish’ was allowed. On Christmas Eve for example, everyone had completed their days work by lunchtime and no one died from the effort!

There were many work processes that could not be easily measured. People doing these jobs had no bonus or a small proportion of an average bonus earned by the groups that their work supported.

I was moved to a small satellite factory where there were quite a number of ’unmeasurable jobs’ and consequently quite a lot of low paid, disgruntled people. Productivity and morale were poor.

Being a gregarious sort of bloke and without any particular strategy in mind, I spent some time getting to know the people in the factory.

I was asked by the factory manager if there was anything I could do for a large department where there was no bonus because no one had been able to measure the work accurately enough to justify a bonus scheme proposal.

I’d previously had a number of casual conversations, about nothing in particular, with the local supervisor and trade union shop steward in the department so I decided to ask them about the problem. Between us we talked to some of the others and then, based on their view of the work and how it could be measured, I created a unique team bonus scheme, checking out the principles and detail with both the local manager and work people as it developed.

Both productivity and pay levels rose substantially (and unit costs fell dramatically) and put this department way ahead of those that were more conventionally managed. The process of introducing the scheme was very swift and trouble free as there was no need for any negotiation or selling because the people involved had helped to build the scheme.

Why was this approach openly condemned by the industrial relationship fraternity?