Brake time? If you work your employees to the bone and still aren't seeing any rise in productivity, speed may not be the only answer.(Staff Smarts)

Ever since scientific management guru Frederick Winslow Taylor started timing assembly-line workers with a stop-watch in the 1800s, there's been a push to work faster.

Today, many employees are slaves to the clock. For employers, meanwhile, it's tempting to push the envelope, especially when they can't raise prices. Why require employees to take 120 calls per day when they can handle 140? Why should they make 10 widgets per hour when they can make 16?

So far, the push for productivity has worked: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, manufacturers boosted productivity 9.4 percent during the first quarter of 2002, while retailers have increased productivity 18.2 percent annually since 1997. In October, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says recent increases in productivity could be the largest in 30 years.

But as the Eagles' song goes, life in the fast lane will surely make you lose your mind. Job speed has been an employee and union By Chris Pen complaint for decades, but it seems to be coming to the forefront lately. In one case last June, hotel housekeepers in Las Vegas put job speed ahead of wages in contract negotiations.

Life in the Fast Lane

For small companies, the pace of keeping up with the competition "is pushing very hard on everybody, from management all the way down," says Ken Sulzer, a labor and employment attorney with Seyfarth Shaw in Los Angeles.

He's seeing employee complaints over retention and job satisfaction as a result. "You never get a complaint of 'This job is too hard; you've sped it up too much.' But that's something in the background that eats away," Sulzer says.