The vans are waiting: At the Mill Lane bakehouse, six bakers under Priti, the head baker, make 1,000 loaves a night for the three shops. Each baker weighs, mixes, shapes and bakes, at their own pace.
Some nights every loaf is on a rack when the vans leave at 5 a.m. Some nights the vans wait, and the shops open with empty shelves.
Marco, who looks after the bakery's equipment, thinks the problem is not the ovens. It is how the work is organized, and how the bakers are paid for it.
Marco has been reading about Frederick Winslow Taylor, an American engineer who studied factory work more than a hundred years ago. In 1911 Taylor set out his ideas in a book, The Principles of Scientific Management. His claim was simple: there is one best way to do every job, managers can find it by measuring, and workers are motivated above all by money. Pay people more for producing more, and they will work harder.
Taylor's method, tried at Mill Lane
Time the work
Marco times every step of the night with a stopwatch: weighing, mixing, shaping a tray of ten loaves, loading an oven. This is work study (time and motion study). Maya shapes a tray in six minutes; the others take eight or nine.
Find the one best way, and split the job
Maya's way of shaping becomes the standard everyone follows. Each baker now does one task all night (division of labour): Tom and Ade mix, Maya and Rosa shape, the other two bake.
Pay for output
Instead of the same rate for every hour, the shapers are paid for every tray shaped to the standard (a piece rate). More trays means more pay, so money becomes the reason to go faster.
Supervise closely
Priti checks each tray against the standard and each baker's count against a target. Managers plan the work; bakers carry it out exactly as planned.
Money is the motivator: Taylor saw a worker as someone who works for pay and little else (sometimes called economic man). So the way to motivate is to tie pay to output.
At $1.50 for every tray of ten loaves, a shaper who finishes 50 trays in a night earns $75 for shaping; one who finishes 60 earns $90. The faster baker is paid more, and every baker has a reason to be faster.
Three weeks later, Taylor seems to be right. The 1,000 loaves are on the racks by half past four, and the vans have not waited once. Each baker is producing more in an hour (higher productivity), so each loaf costs the bakery less to make, and the quickest bakers are taking home more money than before.
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By the second month, the numbers still look good, but the bakehouse does not. Rosa, who spent eleven years making whole loaves from start to finish, now shapes dough from two until five and hardly speaks to anyone. Priti sends back one tray in ten. Two bakers have phoned in sick on the same night.
What Taylor gets right
- Output rises when pay follows output: the vans leave on time
- Clear standards and targets: everyone knows the best way to do the task
- A lower cost for each loaf, because each baker produces more in an hour
- Hard workers are paid more than slow ones, which many see as fair
What goes wrong
- People want more from work than money: Rosa misses her craft and her colleagues
- One task all night is repetitive and dull, so absence and quitting rise
- Rushing for pay: misshapen loaves, so quality falls and checking costs more
- Close checking tells the bakers they are not trusted, which breeds resentment
Where it fits
- Simple, repetitive tasks whose output can be counted
- A production line making the same product all day
- Not jobs where output is hard to count, such as Priti's or a counter assistant's
- Not work where quality, ideas or care for customers matter most
Paid for trays, not for bread: A piece rate pays for the number of trays, so that is what the bakers maximize. Every loaf that is rushed and misshapen still counts until Priti catches it.
So the bakery now pays for more checking, and throws away bread it paid to make. Measuring one thing and paying for it can push out everything that is not measured.
Taylor's ideas have not gone away; the stopwatch has become software. Goldcrust plc records how many items each of its counter staff serves a minute and tracks every delivery driver's route, and sets targets from the data. This is sometimes called digital Taylorism. It raises output on measurable tasks, and it brings the same complaints: staff feel watched, treated like machines, and judged only on what can be counted.
Taylor in two lines: People work for money, so measure the job, find the one best way, pay for output and supervise closely.
It raises output on simple, countable tasks, and it ignores everything else people want from work.
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Rosa is paid more and wants to leave: Rosa earns more under the piece rate than she ever did. She tells Lena she is thinking of leaving anyway.
"I'm paid for trays. Nobody talks to me all night, and nobody asks what I think of the bread any more."
Taylor's theory has no answer to that. Money was never all Rosa wanted.
Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist, offered a wider answer in 1943. He argued that people have five kinds of need, and that they meet them in order, from the most basic upwards (a hierarchy of needs). While a lower need is unmet, it drives what a person does. Once it is met, it stops motivating, and the next need up takes over.
Maslow's five levels of need, the most basic at the bottom. Tap a level to see how a business can meet it.
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The five levels, from the bottom
Physiological needs
What the body needs to survive: food, drink, warmth, shelter, rest. At work: pay that covers the rent and the food bill, and breaks to eat and rest on a long night shift.
Safety needs
Security and protection from harm: knowing the income will still be there next month. At work: a permanent contract, safe equipment, sick pay, a pension.
Social needs (love and belonging)
Friendship and being accepted by a group. At work: being part of a team, colleagues to talk to and eat with, feeling you belong.
Esteem needs
Respect from others and respect for yourself: recognition, status, being valued. At work: praise, awards, a job title, responsibility, promotion.
Self-actualization
Becoming everything you are capable of: growth, creativity, challenge. At work: learning new skills, creative work, a chance to use your full ability.
Three rules that make it a theory: Start at the bottom. An unmet lower need crowds out the higher ones: a baker who cannot pay the rent is not thinking about recognition.
A met need stops motivating. Once pay covers the rent and food, a little more pay moves people less than something from a higher level.
Take a need away and it comes back. Threaten people's jobs, and safety is suddenly all they think about.
Now read Rosa through Maslow. Taylor's piece rate aims at the bottom two levels: money for food and rent. Rosa's are already met by her pay and her permanent contract. What the new system took away sits higher up: the colleagues she talked to (social needs), and being valued for her skill (esteem). That is why more money did not keep her.
Lena and Priti go through the five levels for the night bakers, one at a time, and write down what the bakery already does and what it could add. Keeping the parts of Marco's plan that work, they change the rest.
| Level | What the bakers need | What Lena's Bakery does |
|---|---|---|
| Physiological | Pay that covers rent and food; rest and a meal on a night shift | Pays the bakery's living-wage rate; a paid meal break with free bread and coffee |
| Safety | A steady income; safe work with hot ovens and heavy mixers | Permanent contracts and sick pay; training and protective gloves for the big oven |
| Social (love and belonging) | Colleagues to talk to; being part of a team | Bakers shape and bake in pairs again; the whole shift eats breakfast together after the vans leave |
| Esteem | Recognition for good work; respect from others | Every Friday Priti chooses the loaf of the week, and the baker's name goes on the board in all three shops |
| Self-actualization | Growth, creativity, a chance to use their full skill | Rosa has two nights a month to develop new recipes; her rye sourdough now sells in every shop |
Using Maslow on a business: Three moves, for each level you use. Name the level. Say what that need is. Then show, with a fact from the business, how it is met or not met.
"Esteem needs are the need for recognition and respect. The loaf of the week puts the baker's name on the board in all three shops, so good work is seen."
Where Maslow falls short
- The order is not the same for everyone. Some people put creative work or respect before security, like a baker who takes lower pay to work at a bakery she admires.
- People want several levels at once. Rosa wants colleagues to talk to and to be valued for her bread, on the same night.
- Needs cannot be seen or measured. A manager has to guess which level each employee is at, and it differs from person to person and changes over time.
- Culture. Maslow worked in the United States. Where the group matters more than the individual, belonging may rank above personal esteem.
- Little hard evidence. Studies have not found five fixed levels climbed in this order.
- One reward can meet several levels. Pay buys food, but a higher salary is also a sign of status.
Taylor: money first
- What motivates. Money. People work for pay, so pay for output.
- What managers do. Measure the task, set the one best way, supervise closely.
- Best for. Simple, repetitive work whose output can be counted.
Maslow: needs in order
- What motivates. Whichever need is unmet, from pay and security up to belonging, respect and growth.
- What managers do. Find out which needs are met, and offer what the next level up needs.
- Best for. Explaining why pay stops working once it is enough.
Where the two meet: Taylor's money sits at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy: it meets physiological and safety needs. That is why a piece rate can work well for someone who needs the money, and do little for someone whose pay already covers the basics.
Say which theory you are using, and use its own words: physiological, not physical or psychological.
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How this comes up: A short question on a case: referring to two levels of Maslow's hierarchy, explain how a business meets its employees' needs, for six. Or: using a motivation theory, explain two reasons why a business's employees are motivated, for four.
A longer one on a case: discuss, using Maslow's theory, whether a plan will keep staff from leaving, for ten. And in a social-enterprise case: using a motivation theory, describe one human need the enterprise meets, for two.
The six-mark pattern
- Name the level. Esteem needs.
- Say what the need is. The need for recognition and respect: to be valued by others for your work.
- Show it in the case. Every Friday the loaf of the week puts the baker's name on the board in all three shops.
- Then a second, different level, the same three moves. Self-actualization: growth and creativity; Rosa's two recipe nights a month.
Two traps: A case fact with no level is not an answer. "The bakers eat breakfast together" says nothing about Maslow until you name the level (social needs) and say what it is.
Two facts on one level are one level. Breakfast together and working in pairs are both social needs. The second level must be a different one.
Referring to two levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, explain how Lena's Bakery Ltd meets the needs of its night bakers.
Model answer plan
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