Enhancing human performance in the workplace

How many daily productive hours can we expect from full-time employees in 2024? Fewer than you may think.

Research suggests that the average worker is only productive for three to four hours at best, per eight-hour workday, a norm which surprisingly extends to even highly efficient organisations across the world.

While traditional thinking often equates longer hours with better output, recent data point to a different, and in most cases the opposite perspective, which requires a more modern approach that will prioritise efficiency and value over time spent at work. In addition, data from several sources, including Harvard Business Review, support the concept that 20 per cent of our efforts in enterprise often yield 80 per cent of the results.

These are drastic discrepancies in resource utilisation that require urgent resolution, particularly for Jamaica where growing evidence points to a need for monumental shifts in leadership and management thinking, practices, and resource utilisation. This is to resolve our long-standing battle with poor economic growth, over-reliance on traditional vulnerable industry, low productivity and weak competitiveness that impede the national development plan to become the place of choice to live, work and raise families.

According to 2023 human resources trend data, it is disturbingly commonplace for team leaders to ignore or be unaware of the nexus between flawed work planning and low employee morale, reduced productivity and diminished human performance. As a result, businesses and organisations will likely see increased workplace tensions, conflicts, lower productivity, diminished performance, growing employee frustration, high turnover and wasted human hours this year.

This is another reason to delve into this important multifaceted issue and identify viable strategies to enhance our innovation and global competitiveness while mitigating costly management risks.

LESSONS FROM SWEDEN

Jamaica may do well to learn from Sweden, a country with a rich history of innovation, driven by substantial investments in education and research, which drives their tactical focus on export.

In recent years they have shifted from export of raw materials to finished goods, dominated by cars, telecommunications equipment, and chemical and biotechnology. Today, with exports accounting for 30 per cent of their GDP, the country enjoys an enviable legacy of transformation from a poor agricultural nation to a wealthy society that consistently tops the Human Development Index as the model for exceptional quality of life.

Ranked by the World Economic Forum as one of the most competitive countries in the world in its Global Competitiveness Report, Sweden uses scientific data, including productivity studies and chronobiology, to inform its approach to social and economic development. Chronobiology is the scientific study of biological rhythms and the effects of time on living organisms.

It explains coordination of our various biological processes with light, temperature, and social cues that influence our circadian rhythms, which are the 24-hour cycles that influence our sleep and wake patterns, body temperature, hormone release and cognitive performance.

This allows for optimised work schedules and understanding how time, the environment – such as record-breaking high or low temperatures – affect our energy and periods of alertness.

For enhanced human performance of their workforce, Sweden has championed initiatives aligned with biological rhythms, so that work flows with our humanity and mortality, not against it.

The country employs flexitime, hybrid, and remote work arrangements, which allow employees to select the times of day when they can be most efficient. It’s a win-win for industry and human capital.

Sweden promotes work-life balance health and well-being education and training, and a shorter work week. It’s an ethos grounded in using rest and leisure to maintain high productivity, avoid burnout and minimise stress-related issues in the workforce. Their society has reaped huge rewards, nurturing a highly productive, motivated, and satisfied workforce.

Of note, Jamaica is not Sweden. We differ in historical context, population, resources. There’s also no one-size-fits-all for enterprise, and the effectiveness of their strategies vary by industry, business type and stage of development. Their journey is still useful.

HUMAN PERFORMANCE, INDUSTRY AND PRODUCTIVITY IN JAMAICA

In its most recent overview of the country published on its website, The World Bank reminds us that our industry and society continue to cling precariously to traditional industry rather than radical innovation, to our peril.

It describes Jamaica as “highly vulnerable to external developments given its reliance on imports and tourism. Tourism and agriculture, which account for more than a third of available jobs, are vulnerable to external shocks, especially climate related, which could undermine economic growth and poverty reduction efforts.”

Like Sweden, we must align our industry and workplace infrastructure and practices to exploit chronobiological realities. However, small businesses must take a revolutionary approach and focus on higher value, globally competitive industry and maximising employees’ productive time to produce high-value output, driven by technology.

Value is paramount. As a basic example, instead of running a business that uses a relatively small number of persons to make peanut cake by hand, worth US$50,000 annually for a local market, we need to refocus, retool and retrain people to operate a highly efficient plant that produces medicines, or chemicals or assembles equipment for export, aiming for value north of US$500,000 annually.

Simply put, we can’t just try to improve on what we are doing now. It will not be enough to bridge the competitiveness gaps and mitigate our vulnerabilities. We need revolutionary change, now.

One love,

Yaneek Page is the programme lead for Market Entry USA and a certified trainer in entrepreneurship.