Tuck School Makes Employee Poll

AREPORT on an employee opinion poll taken last spring and summer as a Tuck School project was recently published by Pitney-Bowes, Inc., the company which makes postage meters.

Leßoy U. Jerman '46, working under the guidance of Pjofessor J. E. Walters, Professor of Management and Industrial Relations at Tuck School, prepared the questions and did all the work involved in gathering the information contained in the report.

Questions were asked of all company workers, both production men on an incentive pay scale and those in sales offices who are on a salary basis. The management's comments on the answers (given in percentages) and on representative employee comments, both favorable and unfavorable, brought out the poll's results, as well as clarification of the company's policies.

Areas covered by the questions were grouped under the following headings: Pay, Profits, Opportunity, Security, Work Conditions, Management, Information and Job Satisfaction.

As a result of this report, Pitney-Bowes was given the "Job of the Month" award by The Score, a publication dealing with the latest developments in employer-employee communication. In the publication's announcement of the award, it was stated: "This is the first time The Score has seen a Dartmouth opinion poll. If it's a sample, the school deserves to do a lot more business in the field. To Pitney-Bowes, Inc., then, the Job of the Month award and a deep bow to Dr. Walters and his staff."

The questions which were summarized in the report were answered by 88 per cent of the company's 2,485 employees. This high voluntary turnout was due partly to the fact that the survey was done on company time, but largely to the great care taken by Professor Walters and Mr. Jerman to insure complete secrecy.

Upon the completion of the questionnaires, they were sealed in cartons and taken to Hanover by Mr. Jerman. Here the answers were transferred to IBM cards for tabulation, and eventually reduced to percentages. As a final step in securing the complete secrecy promised by the company, the filied-out questionnaires were burned, as shown in a picture appearing on the back cover of the report.

Entitled What You Think About YourCompany, the report itself is attractively gotten up, with pictures of the employees filling out the questionnaires and of Professor Walters and Mr. Jerman working on the tabulations—as well as aerial views of Tuck School and the Dartmouth campas.

Methods for increasing effectiveness in explaining the aims of management and the opinions of labor is a field which is being recognized as increasingly important, and is one in which Professor Walters, who was President of Alfred University before coming to Dartmouth, is especially interested.

Mr. Jerman, who spent a total of 29 months in the Army during the war, was one of the prisoners in Germany freed by the Allied armies. Returning to Tuck School, he graduated last spring. He is married and at present is connected with the Travelers Insurance Co., in Hartford.

Leßoy U. Jerman '46 and Prof. J. E. Walters of Tuck School, who conducted the opinion poll among employees of the Pitney-Bowes Company in Stamford, Conn.