3° 2 
EMPLOYMENT PSYCHOLOGY 
some objective record of the employee’s activities is nec 
essary. Such a record sets a limit to the imagination of 
the foreman, and also provides the employment manager 
or committee with a concrete and reliable basis upon 
which to rest an opinion. The present chapter is devoted 
largely to the development and application of such a 
record. 
In order to standardize the basis of retention and in 
order to put this basis into record form, it is necessary, 
first of all, to make a comprehensive estimate of the factors 
that should determine retention; in other words, to ascer 
tain the relative importance of the various elements enter 
ing into the relationship of the employee to the company 
or to the company’s officers. 
In making an analysis of this relationship the first 
question which must be answered is: What is the chief 
purpose of the organization as a whole? 
The chief function of an industrial organization, aside 
from all sentimental considerations, is production. It 
matters not whether that production is in the form of 
manufactured goods or in the form of service, such as 
street-car service; it is still production. 
If it is granted that the chief object of an industry is 
to produce, then the foremost and most important factor 
about any member of that industry is his comparative 
productiveness. In estimating the value of the worker to 
the organization the first question should be: How does 
his productiveness compare with that of his co-workers? 
Obviously, an assembler who can assemble half again as 
many parts in a day as another man is the more valuable 
of the two, other things being equal. 
Productiveness has two aspects, quantity and quality, 
which naturally supplement each other. In most manu-