Men know the rules when it comes to a girlfriend or a wife,
but not with a secretary. For a start, you’re probably being
too formal—yet you may spend more time with your
secretary than your wife.

 

of making life better for you and she
must get to know you and your work
habits. Do you often check out for three
or four hours without phoning in?
Should she cover for you or panic? A
large proportion of the information
exchange to begin with should be from
you to her. It is to your advantage that
she know your ambitions, personally
and corporately, Then she can use her
own talents to maximize your productive
time.”

“Women are seen as the helpee,”
says Betty Smith, co-ordinator for
Studies in Management Development at
York University in Toronto. “As soon
as a complicated situation arises, the
guy sends in a man. Meanwhile, paid
brainpower is sitting idle right under
his nose.”

Ms, Smith talks about women who
have worked their way up from secretary
in a steno pool to secretary to the big
boss. “While she was working for a guy
in middle management, the pressure was
on; if she could take over a lot of his
day-to-day responsibilities then he would
have more time to work on promotions.
When he arrived at the top, he got more
money, more status, more power, in-
creased responsibility and a host of male
assistants. She got what was left — a bit
more money and all the menial tasks,
since the important ones were given to
male assistants, Her boss thinks she
should be happy because of her increased
status and the fact that she is in touch
with high management.”

Actually she’s as bored as hell. Her
first reaction is to slack off, taking long
lunch breaks, leaving early or arriving
late. Later, if the situation doesn’t
improve, she leaves. And takes her
experience and all the confidential
information she has picked up with her.

Ms. Smith conducts management
courses at York. One of the questions
that arises most frequently is how to get
subordinates — mainly women — to
work more efficiently. Managers realize
that there is a problem — high turnover
— and they want a magic solution,

They are confounded when Betty
Smith talks about the same kinds of
solutions for women’ as for men, even
women in low-skill, unpromotable posi-
tions. Volvo’s new assembly line policy is
well-known; men who screwed the same
bolt into the same wheel for years are
now building the entire automobile.

Seeing results for their efforts. The
question initially was whether the rate of
production would increase or decrease;
Volvo was interested in the psyches of
their workers, but it is also a profit-orient-
ed operation. Results: Increased pro-
duction and decreased turnover. Varia-
tion on the job promotes productivity,

Still, many companies with a large
number of female employees in clerical
positions don’t feel that on-the-job
rotation would be profitable. It’s no
picnic to restructure jobs so that em-
ployees can have a chance to work in
different departments and see the com-
pany functioning as a whole. Instead,
corporations try the “‘benefits route,”
hoping to curtail turnover. Fred Miller’s
insurance company, for example. When
they hire a woman, they announce that
included in the deal is a membership to
the company’s Employee Club. Like it
or not, she gets cut-rate movies, stamp
and coin clubs, house and garden clubs
for a small annual membership due —
all benefits extrinsic to the job itself. Not
only has this scheme proved ineffectual
in terms of keeping the ladies at their
jobs longer — why move to the insurance’
company across the street when you can
be president of the garden club here? —
it’s actually started to backfire. Ten
years ago, many women were working
to get out of the house and socialize.
Today they resent the fact that manage-
ment thinks they can be placated by
frills. They do their jobs with as little
effort and involvement as possible,
put in the “required’’ number of club
hours each month, and transfer jobs if
they can get one for the same pay a bit
closer to home. Extrinsic job benefits
simply do not enhance the job.

In smaller offices, the same type of
situation arises, The so-called Blake
Grid measures managers on two axes:
concern for people and task concern. A
high concern for both people and
productivity is, of course, optimum. But
a manager who is so concerned with
his employees’ personal welfare that he
neglects task concern completely can be
even more destructive than the boss who
doesn’t give a damn about people’s
feelings as long as they do their job.

The Country Club Mode, as it is
called, ensures that the office is un-
productive. It also causes confusion
because women don’t understand how
to respond.

Where to draw the line on familiarity
is one of the most difficult questions to
answer. Herman Smith feels that men
and women in offices act far more
businesslike than necessary. They work
together for more hours a week than
each spends with his or her spouse, and
they should know about each other as
people. The boss calling his secretary by
her first name and she calling him Mr.
So-and-So, for example, is patronizing
and anachronistic. But how far should
the informality go? Your wife will get
upset if your secretary knows more about
the family’s finances than she does.
Your secretary's husband does not get
a bang out of hearing her talk about
your emotional quirks. “The great
problem,” says Herman Smith, “‘is that
men and women working together in
business don’t realize that they can trust
each other.”’ Men know the rules when it
comes to a girlfriend or wife but not a
secretary. Women know how to relate to
a boyfriend or a husband but not a boss.
“Changes are just beginning to take
place. It will be 30 years before men and
women can relate in the office like lab
partners in college.”

In the meantime, people like Honey
Davis are trying to find ways of ensuring
that the relationship between boss and
secretary has at least a chance of
working out. Mrs. Davis meets with her
client personally before beginning her
search, A few hours in his office during
regular business hours will tell her a lot
about his personality and needs. She
can help him to define the job precisely.
— Is the position promotable? What
everyday tasks can he delegate to his new
secretary in order to make himself more
productive? Each situation is different,
but he should realize that after a few
months, the woman he hires should be
taking on many of the responsibilities
that he himself used to handle.

One criminal lawyer hired a new
secretary about six months ago and
made a point of spending Friday after-
noons with her to discuss the week’s
cases. By the time three months had
gone by, she knew enough about his
practice to pre-interview clients and set
all fees. He figures that the number of
cases he can now handle per month has
increased by 25 percent; she is happy
because she feels she too is responsible
for the firm’s success. The $200 bonus
she gets every few months is not to be