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management

11th September 1970
Page 195
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Page 195, 11th September 1970 — management
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

‘ matters by John Darker, AmBlm A/ 7 Self-examination

by the RTITB

.LTHO UGH the recent staff conference of te Road Transport Industry Training oard was fully reported in a special ipplement in the Board's newspaper, ransport Training, it may be doubted ,hether all recipients would take the trouble ) read it. It contains much of substance and ould in essence be described as the LTITB's own attempt at Management by Objectives—one of the recipes it recomlends to the industry.

Quite naturally, in view of the many ttacks the Board and its officers have faced recent months, a certain sensitivity was ianifested. Official organizations of the size I Training Boards inevitably behave in

,ublic in the stilted fashion of civil servants, thing criticisms on the chin with the

roverbial stiff upper lip. In private onference—the Press were not invited, I relieve—it is to be surmised that there was ;lore plain speaking about the Board's ritics than is apparent from the edited eport.

Mr T. E. Tindall, the director-general, eminded the managers and officers present hat the public relations function was not he stopping of scurrilous articles in the )ress but the changing of the attitude of he industry so that it did what it "had been )ribed to do by the Grant Scheme for more audable and permanent reasons". Even so, here followed even plainer speaking by )thers present.

Mr P. Haxby, director of training, said 10 major training scheme of the Board had 'ailed but to judge from some Press ;omment it was always winter and never :hristmas. "If it was better to be criticized ,han ignored then by that reckoning the Board was doing remarkably well." The Board, he said, was operating in an industry with a tradition largely uninterrupted by :raining. In such a situation it was hoped the inevitability of gradualness would apply.

Quality of training Mr S. D. E. Dunford, divisional manager, management development, was particularly scathing in his remarks on the scene the Board faced at its inception. "The quality of management training varied as widely as the size of the establishments. Managers and owners in the less responsive sectors of the industry went about their work in a state of self-deception. Though forming part of an industry distinguished by poor profitability and doubtful public image, they firmly and often noisily believed in their own competence. "This contradiction was explained away in several ways—government interference was a favourite and trade fluctuations also loomed large. The situation, one was asked to believe, was that managers in this industry were thwarted in their march to success only because, at regular intervals, they were interfered with by the finger of fate."

Then Mr Dunford proceeded to dilate on the abysmally poor standards of management training in the industry. It was disastrous that the average manager in transport spent less than a day a year on training.

"As regards quality of management training," said Mr Dunford, "the situation was little less confusing, ranging from the best to those social rallies that masquerade as training but really consist of mass dormitories disturbed only by the opening of the bar at lunchtime".

A paper prepared by Mr D. Barnett, manager, intelligence department, delivered by Mr R. A. Stewart, contained much useful information. Labour turnover cost the nation an estimated £500m a year. Short of a police state, labour turnover was a fact of life and employers needed to plan accordingly. Nationally, 35 per cent of the working population-8m people—changed jobs in 1969. In the road transport industry the overall average turnover was similar to industry as a whole. About one in six of those leaving a job moved from one sector of the industry to another.

It was significant, said Mr Barnett, that the other sectors of the industry recruited nearly half their craftsmen straight from the garage trade. Also worth noting; the number of establishments with over 250 employees has increased by 17 per cent in the past three years, and there are now 1,000 companies fewer with less than 15 employees.

Mr E. A. Reffold general manager of the TASC division, and his small team face a Herculean job in improving the management performance of small companies in the industry. Mr Reffold's progress report showed that the TASC units had now completed 28 detailed surveys; originally, it had been intended to analyse the problems of 30 to 40 companies and then apply the lessons learned to 300 or 400 firms.

The TASC staff were surprised to learn of the existence of personnel problems in small companies where good working relationships might be expected. In theory, in a small-knit community there would be no communication or organizational problems and record keeping should be a simple matter. In practice, most owners of small businesses employed relatives and friends and this made the organization of work and the maintenance of authority difficult.

Weakness in organization structure was very noticeable, said Mr Reffold. Because there was no definition of areas of responsibility, communications were difficult; staff were often engaged on a haphazard basis. What would seem to outsiders to be 'non-existent problems of personnel relations were in fact too difficult for many small businessmen to tackle.

Dismal tale As Mr Reffold recited his dismal tale of incompetence, the dire financial plight of large sections of the road haulage industry became entirely explicable. How to charge, what to -charge, the meaning of credit control and systematic methods of debt collection: these basic items of "know-how" were often lacking. not unnaturally, there was ignorance of the meaning of capital flow, working capital and liquidity.

Most people would expect that whatever defects small businesses showed in organization and financial control would be more than counterbalanced by shrewd operational control in traffic office and workshop. Not a bit of it! Mr Reffold's men found that there was a lack of scheduling and control in the workshops and much need for advice on vehicle loading, scheduling and control, route optimization and marketing of services provided.

It is disappointing to note that some managers who have appreciated attendance at Motec courses have found difficulty in applying newly learned techniques on returning to their firms. Transport and management students in large organizations often make the same point. It all boils down to the reluctance of top managers in large firms and working proprietors or directors in small firms to change encrusted habits of thought and action.

In the next phase of TASC the intention is to apply the lessons learned so far to a much larger group of companies but at less depth. Clearly there is a limit to the deployment of the professional skill of TASC training officers over a wide field. So two experimental Business Improvement Groups have been set up, with more to follow. TASC are collecting together a dozen or more companies of similar size and in the same sector of the industry.

The experience so far gained is being distilled into one-day seminars held at monthly intervals for group company representatives. In the intervening periods TASC officers will visit each of the dozen or so companies to ensure that the persons concerned have understood and have been able to apply what they have learned. So far, Mr Reffold disclosed, it was thought that one TASC team could cover 12 companies in six months and the full TASC complement of five teams would cover 120 companies in a year. A major problem was how to speed up the "output". Much will depend on the success achieved with a Midlands road haulage group and a garage group at Weston-super-Mare.

When Mr J. M. Carlin spoke on "The Grants Scheme—Keeping the Balance," he stressed that it was quite wrong to suggest that a Training Board imposed a burden on an industry comparable to SET or company taxation. The financial cost to the industry was simply the difference between the total amount of levy raised and the amount paid back in the form of direct grant. Moreover, it had to be realized that the industry could claim tax relief on levy paid, whereas the Board had no such liability.

"The Board's real income being this excess of levy over grant, it followed that a large contribution towards financing the Board's activities was in fact made by the Government in the form of tax relief," he added. "It might be said, for example, that for every £1m, by which levy exceeded grant, the actual cost to the industry was around £600,000; the other £400,000 being, in fact, a Government contribution in the form of tax relief."

Smell firms Bearing in mind some of the earlier strictures about the incompetence of small firms in the industry, it was hardly surprising to learn from Mr E. D. Youn regional grants manager, eastern at southern regions, that although there were multitude of small claims, most of the gra went to companies of .50 or mo employees. Only 26 per cent of all registen companies claimed grant.

Mr Young speculated that in the future might be feasible to abolish grant; at cm recent meeting of motor traders almo everyone present had been in favour I grant abolition provided that the actil services of Board training officers wou continue to be made available.

Mr Tindall's highly detailed summary the Board's Management by Objectivi philosophy defies treatment in the spa( available. I should have liked to read ma discussion about the problems of ti industry in the Seventies as opposed to ti somewhat negative self-examination ar self-justification. Granted that training desperately important and the industr should willingly spend much more mom on it, not enough people are charting ti future. Capitol House has the staff and, or hopes, the time, to think of the industry structure and organization in five or 10 yet time.


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