COLUMN: Don’t specialize, generalize
Time is money.
So, in order to save ourselves time while earning our money, America’s society has improved technology and created job specialization. The first topic I would like to address is our improvement in technology. I think many would agree our society is experiencing a technological boom. Today, it seems as if there is a dot-com for everything and you can do pretty much anything with the click of a button.
The new technologies of today are supposed to make things more time-efficient for us. However, does it really save us time? If things are really as advanced as they seem to be, and if most things can be done faster by the click of a button, then why is it taking Meier and Frank approximately eight weeks to ship me silverware?
Let’s think about this.
First, Meier and Frank would need to enter my order into the computer (two minutes).
Second, my order should then be sent to the warehouse via computer (effectively a matter of seconds).
Third, once noticing the order, someone in the warehouse should be able to go right to the shelf where my order is stored and put my package together (at most a week, depending on how many orders he/she has received).
Fourth, once my order has been put together in a box, it should then be sent to me – right after the order has been collected (normal ground shipping can take as long as 5-7 business days).
If we add this up, it should only take at a maximum of three weeks – not two months. Two months implies the workers will be mining silver and pouring my silverware after they have received my order. Two months could also imply the company only has one person who is capable of compiling my package and since he is out sick, no one else can do it – which brings me to my next point.
Job specialization is another attempt of efficiency in American society, but is it efficient? Derek L. Waller, professor at E.M. Lyon Management School in France wrote about job specialization in his textbook, “Operation Management.”
He said, “Job specialization should mean efficiency because people are performing work they know how to do well. However, the repetitive nature means that jobs can be boring to the point that people become sloppy; then quality suffers and costs rise.”
In certain companies, I realize specialization might be a crucial part of business. They might rely on certain people who have specific technical knowledge some others might not have. However, in my experience, job specialization seems inefficient.
Have you ever stood in a line for what seemed like forever, only to get to the front desk and have the person say, “The person who is in charge of that isn’t here, so you’ll have to come back later?”
Sometimes it seems that people are so specialized they can’t do anything besides their assigned task, even if it is as simple as changing an address. Specialization is supposed to be efficient because it involves one person doing one thing he excels at. It is supposed to help get the job done faster because that one person knows what he is doing and doesn’t get hung up on minor details.
However, in my experience, it seems whenever I go somewhere or call a company, the specialist is never available. I don’t know about you, but a typical work week these days is about 40 hours, and it seems these specialists are only available for the three hours I have class or something else to do. So instead, we are stuck waiting in lines which end up being long and slow, because the person at the front desk has to keep explaining she has no idea when the specialist is coming back, or when the specialist will be available to help.
With 20 people who work in the same building, wouldn’t it be more efficient to train each employee with a majority of tasks instead of just one? So, we advance technology to save us time while we’re making money, but it seems to me that we waste too much of our time and money fixing our defective technology and waiting for the one person who knows how to fix one problem.
Katie Higgins is a junior majoring in speech communication. Comments can be sent to her at klm@cc.usu.edu