Selling jobs in the service sector

The service sector of the economy is at a critical stage of development. Pressures for productivity are leading service industry executives to either replace service workers with machines, or develop systems and procedures which remove as much discretion as possible from service employees, in order to substitute lower-skilled/lower-paid service workers for higher-skilled/higher-paid employees. Such a systematic substitution of capital equipment and detailed procedures for labor skills has considerable merit in many instances. However, it may also cause the service industry to repeat many of the mistakes already made by the manufacturing sector. For instance, work force alienation in the manufacturing sector has been caused in large part by the use of operating systems which both pace the employee and remove most of the employee's discretion in the performance of his assigned tasks. The service firm must now realize that its most critical productive resource is its work force and the key to success is for the service business to regard its jobs as its principal products and its employees as its most important customers. MACHINES FOR PEOPLE