Personnel and Welfare: The Case of the Problem Drinker at Work
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055045 |
| Pages | 17-21 |
| Date | 01 January 1985 |
| Published date | 01 January 1985 |
| Author | J. Hyman,P.B. Beaumont |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Personnel and
Welfare: The
Case of the
Problem Drinker
at Work
by J. Hyman
Lecturer in Industrial Relations,
Sunderland Polytechnic, and
P.B. Beaumont
Department of Social and Economic
Research, University of Glasgow
Introduction
Concern over the welfare of employees was an important
factor in the development of the personnel function and
there is little doubt that considerations of welfare have re-
mained embedded within the ethos of personnel manage-
ment. This seems to have been a source of embarrassment
to many personnel managers; in their view it contributed
substantially to their "soft" image, long held by production
and marketing members of senior management. And cer-
tainly a number of academics have argued that the person-
nel function could only achieve a position of some authori-
ty and status in organisations when its activities had mov-
ed substantially beyond the welfare function[1].
In practice, however, the welfare content of personnel ac-
tivity has tended to vary both quantitatively and qualitatively
over time in line with changing knowledge, fashions and
legislation.
In particular, though it might have been expected
that the post-war emergence of the welfare state would
diminish the workplace component to the point of extinc-
tion,
work by Kenny[2] and more recently by Stewart[3]
sug-
gests that the retreat from welfare is more apparent than
real.
In this article we review the background to this alleg-
ed rediscovery phase and present evidence of welfare ac-
tivity in a number of work organisations based in Scotland
which have introduced recovery programmes for employees
with alcohol-related problems. The study points to exten-
sive involvement by personnel specialists in the operation
of these policies. This evidence adds substance to the view
that welfare responsibilities form part of the personnel func-
tion which is itself currently undergoing a period of change.
The Welfare Tradition in Personnel Management
The welfare workers appointed in certain companies in the
last decade of the 19th century were viewed essentially as
communication intermediaries between management and
employees, a function that was seen to be increasingly
necessary as the average size of companies increased. By
1914 it was estimated that something like two dozen firms
had specialised welfare departments. In the previous year
the Welfare Workers Association had been founded with
35 members. This association kept the term "welfare
workers" in its title until 1931 when it was re-named the
Institute of Labour Management; it became, in
turn,
the In-
stitute of Personnel Management (with 2,896 members) in
1946.
The term "welfare work" has been broadly defined by
academics, such as Fox[1] to encompass not only the ear-
ly concern with workers' physical working conditions-
sanitation,
canteens, hours of work, rest pauses, etc, but
also the "human relations" school of thought. The reason
for including the latter under this broad heading is two-fold.
Firstly, the achievement of job satisfaction was seen as the
way to achieving higher productivity, in contrast with scien-
tific management thought where the line of causation went
the other way[4]. Secondly, and most importantly for our
present purposes, was the major importance attached to
employee counselling by the early welfare workers and the
human relations movement. Prescriptive discussions of
welfare work tend to stress counselling on personal pro-
blems as their main area of activity[5], while Mayo himself
strongly advocated "non-directive counselling" on the basis
of his research experience at the Hawthorne plant:
The idea was to have a group of counsellors who would be
paid by management but who would not report to manage-
ment what the workers said to them when they spilled their
troubles. Since the workers knew this, they would feel free to
talk out their problems[6].
Perhaps not surprisingly the most sizeable program of employee
counselling that we know about was established in the
Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company. The five
counsellors in 1936 had expanded to 55 by 1948, but by 1955
the number was only eight; the decline appeared to be the result
of a new generation of managers questioning the cost-
effectiveness of the program[7].
There is a good deal of evidence of the increased status
and authority of the personnel management function in
many organisations in Britain from the early 70s. One of the
most important indicators in this regard is the extent to
which organisations have directors whose specialist respon-
sibility is personnel/industrial relations[8]. Such indications
ER 7,1 • 1985 17
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