My candidate is Columella, a Roman writer on agriculture. What he didnt know about viticulture and farming wasnt worth knowing. He also knew a few things about employment. But he was far more than an Alan Titchmarsh in a toga. In fact there are sections from his most important tract, De re rustica, written in the first century AD, that make it a strong contender for the worlds first management book.
Columella thought that effective people management was essential to make a farming estate productive. To this end he recommended a series of measures that today would be described as family-friendly policies. Happy employees, he reasoned, will work for you. Unhappy employees might not walk away they couldnt in his day since they were slaves but they might kill you.
Columella was making the business case for promoting the welfare of slaves. His argument was that of expediency people will respond best, he argued, if they are looked after and promised some reward. Sick slaves needed care and those working inside the villa needed space for their families. Cells should have natural light and slaves good, durable, work clothes to do their jobs. He even suggested some consultation between master and slave.
Columella was no more a do gooder than the average HR manager today. The aim of promoting such welfare policies and employee consultation was to ensure a productive and, most importantly, servile workforce. His advice was designed less to increase productivity and more to foster employee loyalty and obedience.
De re rustica was a watershed in management advice, recognising that people respond to encouragement when the consensus at the time was management by fear. Columellas writing didnt overturn such management. Slave owners continued to brand, chain and flog their charges.
But Columella offered an alternative approach, one indeed that underlines the body of theory guiding contemporary human resources. So why, so many centuries later, does fear continue to exist in the workplace? Today employees must confront fear of failure, fear of demotion or fear of losing their jobs. Some personnel policies are designed to reduce this fear training to increase employability, flexible staffing and job rotation to increase workforce experience and adaptability. But when the chips are down, when poor management or a shrinking market, or both, are in danger of sinking the business, the hatchet is passed over to personnel.
It happens to the best of businesses and it is happening today. A recent study carried out in the UK for Penna Sanders & Sidney, the outplacement company, found that, of 1,000 people interviewed at random in the street, four in 10 had been made redundant at one time or another.
One thing that was not made clear in the survey was how many of those who lost their jobs went voluntarily. The more employable our companies make us the more enticing it is to take the redundancy package when its offered. There are a lot of variables. The young are perhaps more likely to think this way than older people who may have more financial commitments.
So should redundancy be offered first to those who will not suffer too much from its consequences? A concentration on the welfare of employees might suggest that it should but increasingly sophisticated measures of performance are encouraging managements to be more selective.
But once you begin to make people redundant using performance criteria you re-introduce stigma to redundancy. You also send a message to the survivors that they might be next, creating once again, the management by fear that Columella was trying to avoid. Those who believe the range of performance measures available today is the answer to managements problems should think again. Management was hard for the Romans and its hard today but Columella was on the right track.
Email address: richard.donkin@haynet.com
Richard Donkin is editor of FTCareerPoint.com and author of Blood Sweat and Tears: The Evolution of Work, published by Texere
