Fifty years ago: Productivity, morale and occupational medicine

The Industrial Society, both recently and previously when it was the Industrial Welfare Society, has had close contacts with occupational medical officers and has done what it can to encourage industry and commerce to pay attention to this aspect of their business. It is a highly practical society, now specializing in promoting the best use of human resources. Before becoming Director of the Industrial Society, the speaker had been for 15 years on the sales side and on the personnel side of a large chemical company, and it was from his observations during this 20-year period that he was talking. He had often wondered why more companies did not appoint full-time medical officers and pay more attention to what these people could achieve for industry. There are still many large companies running on industrial nurses only. Was this, at least in part, because medical officers were paying attention to human problems in far too narrow a way? What is the problem? The main problem in industry today is not the over-exploitation of people, but their under-use; failure to motivate them, to get them to accept that their work matters and that they are needed. One finds this among the young as well as among the more senior, where the job may have outgrown them and they are left utterly frustrated. This is reflected in blood pressures, thromboses, sickness absence and lateness. All this is not helped by the need for large units and the fact that much work, whether we like it or not, will continue to be boring, many of the modern jobs being worse than the old. The answers do not lie in money, which may increase the problem rather than decrease it, nor with the unions, who do not carry the responsibility for motivating people, nor with welfare above a certain level. As the State improves the basic welfare of the nation with better medical services, sickness schemes, pension funds and recreation clubs, medical centres in industry are less necessary than they were. Where do the answers lie and what can Occupational Medical Officers do to help?

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