Increasing Productivity and Morale in a Municipality: Effects of Organization Development

A year-long organization development project in the Communications and Electrical Division of the City of San Diego was completed and assessed. The goals of the project were to increase productivity and to improve morale, without allowing either goal to interfere with achievement of the other. The treatment group received an intervention that consisted of personal interviews of all employees, team-building workshops, counseling, process consultancy, and training in management skills. Measures of productivity (number of tasks performed, efficiency in both time and money) and job satisfaction (three surveys: absenteeism, turnover, grievances filed) as well as customer satisfaction (mail and telephone surveys) were taken both before and during the intervention period. Data from suitable comparison groups were collected for several of the dependent measures. The results lent strong support to the notion that both productivity and morale can be increased by means of organization development techniques.