Specifications

Every good supervisor always seeks to improve the work methods of his unit. The WORK SIMPLIFICATION PROGRAM is designed to furnish such supervisors with handy, clear blueprints of the present working methods of their own units. Analysis of the facts on these blueprints will help eliminate bottlenecks and lost effort and make supervisory work easier. WORK SIMPLIFICATION is a tested program for improving the method of doing work - finding a “better way” - doing a better job with less effort and in less time.

Why Does The Government Need Work Simplification?

The government writes 300,000,000 checks, audits 80,000,000 vouchers, and sends 1,530,000,000 letters in a single year. These figures spell big business. The government is big business — the biggest in the world. Its business must be transacted with dispatch — during the war especially and during the critical period which will follow the war.

Increased demands upon agencies and less with which to satisfy those demands because of current manpower shortages have multiplied the problems of production and procedure which face each agency. Thus, war will leave a residue of old unsolved management problems. Reconversion will bring new demands and new adjustments which will create administrative problems that must be solved. A simple, systematic way of solving them with available resources is a program of work simplification carried out by your own line supervisory personnel.

What Is Work Simplification?

Work simplification attacks the procedural problems of large organizations by equipping first-line supervisors to analyze and improve procedures. These operating managers have a great unused reservoir of practical “know how.” This program will tap it.

It Gets At Three Basic Management Problems:

• The distribution of work.
• The sequence of work.
• The volume of work.

Since in this plan agency people train agency first-line supervisors to study and solve these basic problems in their own units, improvements grow from the “grass roots.” Thus management obtains results which cannot be achieved in any other way. In this program supervisors learn to gather facts quickly, to organize them in simple chart form and to interpret them properly. Then supervisors take action on improvements within their own units. Proposals for improvements affecting wider areas of the organization they refer to their superiors.

Work simplification is not something that supervisors will use only once — a shot in the arm. It is a continuing program which becomes a part of every supervisor’s day-to-day job. Once the supervisor masters the method he will use it as a matter of course in solving his everyday work problems.

What Work Simplification Will Do For Your Agency?

Work simplification is a means through which your agency can cut red tape, simplify procedures, eliminate unnecessary reports and forms and provide better scheduling of work. Thus your agency will be able to balance its work, reduce backlogs and provide speedier service to the public. If the flood of papers can be reduced to a trickle all hands can pitch into the substance of your program. Work simplification will also bring many broader problems of procedure and organization to the attention of top management and staff assistants. These may be sources of further improvements.

Benefits of work simplification have been demonstrated in other organizations:

• A large aircraft manufacturing company saved 4,000,000 man-hours annually as a result of such a program in which 6,000 supervisors received instruction.
• The Quartermaster Corps reduced its force by 16,298 employees by applying work simplification techniques for one year.
• In the Army Service Forces as a whole work simplification spotted 834 useless forms and records which were eliminated.
• In a field office of one civilian agency a work simplification program resulted in a 50% reduction in force.

What You Must Do

To put work simplification over in your agency you must take these steps:

1. Decide to give the program your whole-hearted enthusiastic support.
2. Discuss the program at some length at a meeting of your key subordinates. You may even find it advisable to call a general meeting of all your employees to explain the program to them personally and emphasize your interest in it.
3. Issue an administrative order or directive emphasizing your support of the program. In this tell your employees what this program of work simplification is—what it will do for them.
4. Appoint a top management representative as your agent to follow up the program. It will be his job to see that the program keeps a full head of steam. Instruct him to report it to you if it shows signs of bogging down.
5. Provide adequate staff facilities for carrying on the program in your agency. Staff personnel must be provided to train first-line supervisors in work simplification. They must also follow-up on complex problems growing out of the supervisors’ suggestions which require further attention.
6. Select the places in your organization where work simplification should begin. Experience shows that work simplification pays the biggest, quickest dividends in streamlining routine repetitive processes. When your staff is fully familiar with the program it can be extended to other areas.
7. Make sure that the program gets results. By reports on progress and contact with the staff you select you can keep informed on what is being accomplished.

What Is The Price Of Work Simplification?

Vigorous Support

Several hours of your time must be spent in expressing your interest and support for the program vigorously so that it will get off to a good start. You will also want to spend some time reviewing the results of the program. Then you must be prepared to face the fact that the follow-up of the program will take a considerable amount of the time of one of your principal assistants.

Staff Assistance

Staff assistants must be selected to carry on the actual program. You know how fast you want to move. Here’s a rule of thumb to use in calculating personnel requirements for the program. One staff assistant should be able to train 50 supervisors over a period of six months.

If this seems like slow progress remember a staff assistant has a follow-up as well as a training job. He must handle any problems that arise which are over the supervisor’s head or out of his bailiwick. Members of an organization and methods staff would be a natural choice for this assignment. Otherwise alert operating officials or members of budget or personnel staffs can be used if carefully selected for resourcefulness and analytical ability. Immediate leadership should be available from a full-time program director of high caliber. Adequate stenographic assistance is also necessary.

Operator Participation

You must invest 12 hours of the time of the supervisors who participate in the program. This is not all just “schooling” by any means. Only 3 hours of the 12 will be spent in actual training conferences. The supervisors will spend 9 hours in working out simplifications of their own work with the guidance of the staff assistants. The supervisors will then be ready to carry on work simplification as a part of their regular day-to-day responsibilities.

What Assistance is Available To You?

Personal Assistance

Assistance can be obtained to help you select and train the staff assistants who will carry the program to the supervisors. Such assistance will help insure the success of your initial program so that work simplification will become standard operating practice in your agency.

Prepared Training Materials

All the training materials required to put on a work simplification program are available to government agencies without charge. “Supervisor’s Guides” on the Work Distribution Chart, the Process Chart and the Work Count — the three tools of Work Simplification — are available for distribution to supervisors. In effect these guides constitute the “text” in your work simplification course. There is also a “text” for the staff assistants who train the supervisors. This booklet contains suggestions on conducting the training conferences and hints for using a set of training posters which are also available for any agency adopting the program.

Consulting Service

Specialized assistance on particular areas or problems of administration will frequently be of use in fully capitalizing on work simplification. Supervisors are certain to make suggestions about problems whose solution demands assistance from a specialist. Several of the staff agencies of government furnish advisory service on special problems of administration. Maybe some other line agency has encountered your particular headache and cured it. Professional and trade associations, universities and private business houses are often fertile sources of suggestions. Part of the stock in trade of those who are available to assist you to launch your program is a thorough knowledge of such sources.