Are You Managing Humans or Just Resources?

Elton Mayo began research into how working conditions shaped productivity. What started as a focus on lighting, hours, and breaks soon uncovered insights that would change how we understand workplaces forever. His findings challenged the idea that organisations run only on processes and machines, pointing instead to a far more human driver of performance, one that some HR professionals still wrestle with today.

The Birth of Human Motivation through Elton Mayo's lens

Although Elton Mayo was a supporter of the theory of Taylorism, suggesting employees are motivated by pay, he believed that employee motivation was more complex than only being influenced by money, and he endeavoured to find out what the other factors were.

He initially believed physical factors eg, working hours, rest breaks, heat, led to motivated workers. This led to the setting up of a series of tests in the 1920s known as the Hawthorne experiment, in Illinois, investigating how the various factors affected employee motivation and productivity. The results showed that the negative decrease in physical factors didn’t influence employee motivation and productivity, but rather, increased it or, at the very least, it remained the same.

He concluded that it was social factors that were the key to boosting employee motivation and productivity. Positive relationships and clear communication between managers and employees were found to be very influential, because employees felt valued and appreciated to take part in this experiment.

The results of the Hawthorne experiment and Mayo’s Human Relations theory led to the development of the first-ever formal personnel department, which we know today as the Human Resources Department. The path following this was for managers to be more involved more in their employees’ working lives as humans and social beings, and the development of team team-structured workforce to increase social interaction in the workplace.

The Hawthorne Effect which is often criticised, illustrates that the more attention employees receive, the more valuable they feel and the more productive they become, because they become aware that they are being observed. Some of these critics were:

Unscientific approach with an insufficient number of individuals selected for the experiment.
Conflict in the workplace is inevitable and essential for progress, and this theory doesn’t show the impact of the occurrence of conflict and assumes that when the theory is followed there could not be conflict.
The theory oversimplifies human behaviour, that hard workers are automatically productive employees, ignoring the other factors affecting employee productivity.

The everyday power of social factors

While many of us know the textbook summary - “social factors matter, morale drives productivity” - the deeper lessons of Mayo’s work are often overlooked. For HR practitioners today, those insights remain not only relevant but critical.

Businesses should have a dedicated Human Resources Department outwardly looking to meet the needs of the employees:

This theory encourages positive workplace relationships, especially between superiors and subordinates.
Managers should take more interest in their employees as people on an individual basis and not just as workers.
Social factors help increase employee morale, productivity, retention, and motivation.

‘Happy Worker’ Myth

Mayo proved that happy workers are more productive. What the Hawthorne Studies actually revealed was more subtle: attention and involvement make employees feel significant.

When researchers adjusted lighting, breaks, or hours, productivity rose not simply because conditions improved, but because workers sensed that management cared enough to observe and include them.

In HR language, this was an early recognition of employee voice and psychological safety - core drivers of engagement to this day.

The Silent Networks

Modern HR professionals see the dynamic recognising that informal leaders and social networks within the workplace are often more important than enforcing formal rules; eg, from sales teams quietly agreeing not to “overachieve” against targets, to office cliques shaping the real culture beneath official values.

Attention as Double-Edged Sword

The so-called Hawthorne Effect is widely cited: people change their behavior when they know they’re being observed. But here’s the nuance most miss: why people feel observed matters.

When observation signals care and recognition, it builds trust.
When observation signals control and suspicion (as with excessive monitoring software), it breeds anxiety and resistance.

For HR leaders, this means performance management must be supportive, not punitive. Regular check-ins are powerful - but micromanagement destroys morale.

Morale: The Fragile Multiplier

Mayo demonstrated that morale isn’t a “soft” issue. It is a multiplier of productivity. A motivated workforce can outperform even under imperfect conditions, while demoralized employees underperform no matter the incentives.
This has real implications today. Competitive salaries and perks can attract talent, but they cannot compensate for broken morale caused by poor communication, lack of recognition, or toxic management. Once morale is damaged, trust is difficult - sometimes impossible - to rebuild.

Supervisors: The Hidden Variable in Morale

The Hawthorne Studies quietly highlighted something every HR veteran knows: supervisors matter more than structures. Workers thrived when supervisors were supportive, approachable, and respectful. They resisted when managers were authoritarian or dismissive.

This echoes the modern reality: employees don’t quit companies, they quit managers.
For HR, the lesson is clear: real cultural change doesn’t happen through slogans or corporate values - it happens through daily interactions with frontline managers, making coaching, developing, and holding supervisors accountable one of the highest-value investments HR can make.

The Manipulation Trap

One critique of Mayo’s approach was that ‘attention’ could be used as a tool of manipulation - making workers feel cared for simply to extract more productivity.

Employees eventually sense when engagement programs are hollow, and when recognition is purely transactional.

This is a warning for modern HR: authenticity matters. Engagement initiatives, wellness programs, and recognition schemes only work when they are rooted in genuine concern for employees as people, not as resources to be optimized.

Scientific Management VS Human Relations Theory

Scientific Management (Taylor)

Focused on tasks, processes, efficiency

Assumed workers are motivated by pay alone

Management = control and supervision

Workers as “economic man”

Productivity driven by optimization of work methods

Human Relations Theory (Mayo)

Focused on people, relationships, morale

Showed workers are motivated by social needs and recognition

Management = communication and support

Workers as “social man”

Productivity driven by morale, belonging, and trust

Conclusion: The Human System Comes First

The genius of Elton Mayo’s Human Relations Theory was not in discovering that workers like attention, but in proving that organizations are, at their core, social systems before they are technical systems.

Machines run on oil. Organizations run on morale, trust, and relationships. For HR specialists, the Hawthorne legacy is clear: if you want sustainable productivity, start with the human element.

References:

Elton Mayo Human Relations School of Thought | Theory of Motivation | Hawthorne Experiment |

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_relations_movement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management

By Utugi Karanja,

HR Associate

HRBOX AFRICA