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In 1924, Elton Mayo of Harvard undertook a study of Chicago’s Western Electric Hawthorne Plant in an attempt to find out how lighting affected the company’s workers and their performance.  The focus of his study was whether electric light would keep workers awake, thereby boosting their output, or whether the artificial lighting actually made them more tired. 

One of the earliest studies of human behaviour in the workplace, Mayo’s findings had a profound impact upon people management when they were first published in 1927 - and the ideas underpinning his results are just as relevant today.  

What Mayo discovered was that the physical conditions in which employees work have little or no impact on their performance in terms of motivation…  the factors that matter involve the social aspects of working for an organisation - and these alone can actually boost motivation and productivity, regardless of location, industry, class, education or other socio-economic elements. 

The interest that Mayo took in all the individuals of the Hawthorne plant was unusual for its time and it made each of them feel important, respected and valuable – so much so that this attention alone was enough to significantly increase their efficiency and output. 

Surprised by his findings, Mayo went back and expanded his study into what are now known as the Hawthorne Experiments; meanwhile, his original studies have been replicated many times over in the intervening years.  Time and again, the results continue to show that, when companies value their staff by listening to their ideas and opinions, this respect motivates employees to give of their best, resulting in higher standards of performance and achievement.  So, when companies treat their employees as a group of individuals rather than a standardised unit of production, workers are able to act as the sentient people that they are, increasing self-esteem and their sense of unique value. 

Key learnings from Mayo’s Hawthorne study are as follow :

• Work is a group activity
• An adult’s social life is primarily arranged around work
• The need for recognition, security and a sense of belonging are more important in determining an employee’s morale and productivity than are the conditions in which they work
• Complaints at work aren’t necessarily about the stated facts; often they are simply manifestations of someone’s underlying concern about their status
• An employee is a person whose attitudes and effectiveness are conditioned by social factors - from their home life as much as by their place of work
• Informal groups at work exercise strong social controls over the work habits and attitudes of individual members of staff
• Organisations can be described as adaptive societies – where employees have to keep up with new technologies and ever-changing work practices.  The constant shift that is inherent in all business disrupts the social structure within companies and has a negative effect on industry in general
• For group collaboration to occur, it must be planned and developed – but when it’s achieved, the resulting cohesion can negate the disruptive effects of an adaptive society. 

Put simply, people respond to the human dimension of being amongst a group of individuals in the same way as they would in society – the fact that this occurs in a work context is neither here nor there.  We are a social species, programmed to inter-relate with one another, and the need to fit into whichever subset of society we are faced with is hard-wired into each of us.  First and foremost, we have a primitive need to belong; next, to find our place within a group; then, to try and distinguish ourselves from our colleagues in some way.  This behaviour takes place all across the world so it’s inevitable that it happens at work as well.

Historically, companies viewed their staff simply as a resource and the dehumanising affect this had on their employees caused great dissatisfaction – with the knock-on effect that morale and motivation were low. 

Mayo’s studies stumbled across this phenomenon when they began singling out each member of staff to ask for their opinions.  By treating each worker as a valued individual whose voice would be heard and respected, the Hawthorne Plant was transforming its collective workforce into a team of people, giving all of them the attention and differentiation that they naturally craved.  And, by fostering a sense of community in which staff were encouraged to interact on a social level, this positive effect was compounded…  So of course the lighting conditions became irrelevant compared with the spark of human feeling that had been ignited.  Society, belonging, individualism, respect and value had inadvertently been introduced – producing a groundswell of motivation and productivity. 

These concepts are what form the basis of employee engagement today : two-way communication, involving staff, listening to their ideas and opinions, and trying to create a positive culture at work.  In their book, Follow This Path: How the World’s Greatest Organisations Drive Growth by Unleashing Human Potential (Warner Books, 2002), Curt Coffman and Gabriela Gonzalez-Molina echo the essence of Mayo’s research thus,

“The success of your organisation doesn’t depend on your understanding of economics, or organisational development, or marketing.  It depends, quite simply, on your understanding of human psychology : how each individual employee connects with your company and how each individual employee connects with your customers.”

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