Britain: An official handbook > 1959

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BRITAIN: AN OFFICIAL HANDBOOK
regional schemes of apprenticeship and other long-term training. Further expansion
and improvement of training facilities have been urged in the report of a sub¬
committee of the National Joint Advisory Council. This report, published in
February 1958 under the title Training for Skill, stressed that the increase in the
number of young people leaving school in the next few years afforded a great
opportunity to increase the supply of skilled workers and technicians, and proposed
that a council should be formed by industry to follow up its various recommendations.
This led to the establishment, in July 1958, of the Industrial Training Council,
composed of representatives of the British Employers’ Confederation, the Trades
Union Congress and the nationalised industries.
Both voluntary and official organisations have been concerned with the promo¬
tion of better human relationships in industry. The voluntary organisations include
bodies which deal with management problems and provide a service to subscribing
firms, professional associations linking individuals who have a common interest in
particular functions of management and administration, and bodies which provide
specialist services usually on a fee-paying basis.
In I945> the Ministry of Labour and National Service established a Personnel
Management Advisory Service which has done much to promote good personnel
management and to assist firms by discussing problems of personnel policy. The
service is staffed by a team of experienced Personnel Officers recruited from
industry.
The Government has sought to extend by research the available knowledge of
the factors influencing human relations in industry and human efficiency. Research
units of the Medical Research Council (MRC) have worked on these problems
for many years. In 1948} the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy set up a com¬
mittee on industrial productivity, one of whose panels was a human relations panel
responsible for two major research projects on the problems of joint consultation.
In March 1953, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR)
and the Medical Research Council set up two committees concerned with research
on the human factor in industry, the Committee on Human Relations in Industry
and the Committee on Individual Efficiency in Industry. Finance for the research
piojects approved by these committees was derived partly from the Exchequer and
partly from the counterpart funds of United States Conditional Aid to the United
Kingdom.
The Committee on Pluman Relations approved a number of projects for research
into such questions as factors influencing the effectiveness of incentive payment
schemes, factors facilitating and restricting the introduction of new techniques and
methods in industry, characteristics of management organisation affecting produc¬
tivity, industrial education, training and promotion, and the problems of the
effective employment in industry of special groups such as older persons and
married women.
The Committee on Individual Efficiency concerned itself with research into such
matters as the influence of equipment design and working tools on operator
efficiency, factors affecting the efficient utilisation of industrial engineering tech¬
niques, and training methods in industry.
T he results of this work are now appearing. The committees have been dis¬
banded, but the DSIR has appointed a new Committee on Human Sciences, while
units of the MRC are continuing research into cognate problems.