Kristen Gyles | Losing motivation to work

The country would be doomed if it took each working person two working days to draft an email of two sentences. The country would be even more doomed if while operating at that snail’s pace we all thought we were being efficient and productive. This is exactly why we measure labour productivity. And after two decades of recording its gradual decline, it’s time to discuss why labour productivity is waning so that we can hopefully arrive at the best approach to take in reversing its current direction.

The economic research has shown that between 2001 and 2019, labour productivity in Jamaica declined by an average of 0.6 percent annually. The Economic and Social Survey Jamaica 2022 released by the PIOJ also suggests that the decrease in productivity has worsened to an average of 0.8 per cent between 2018 and 2022. The research highlights, firstly, that our low productivity problem is not new, but is worsening. Furthermore, when compared with our peers across the Caribbean, it appears Jamaica has one of the lowest levels of labour productivity.

In a broad sense, labour productivity measures the quantity of goods and services produced by the average worker within a given period of time. If the percentage of employed persons within the country increases, but the country doesn’t end up producing any more, it would mean that those employed persons, though increased in number, are producing less individually. And that would constitute a decrease in labour productivity.

To put things in perspective, the employed labour force increased by an average of two per cent annually between 2018 and 2022, while the country’s GDP increased by an average of only 0.5 per cent annually during the same period.

LITTLE AVAIL

In response to the waning productivity levels, different administrations of government have tried to implement various projects to allow for greater efficiency across the workforce, but to little avail. For example, there has been a sustained effort to improve the public transportation system to allow the average worker to spend less time travelling to and from work, so they can spend more time actually working (whether at work or at home). A refinement of the national curriculum at all levels and other general improvements to the education system would also help to better equip young people entering the workforce with the skills needed to perform their respective roles well. Regardless, these efforts just haven’t materialised into increased productivity.

Maybe we have misdiagnosed the actual problem. Recent conversations surrounding Jamaica’s skilled labour shortage have highlighted that, as a country, we do not possess every skill known to mankind. There are some skills that we have a lot of, some skills we don’t have so much of, and some skills we don’t have at all. Productivity will naturally be low in areas where we simply don’t possess high levels of skill, but while there might be a chronic skills shortage in a few sectors, do we have any basis for assuming this is the case generally?

Some policymakers have attributed the decline in productivity to the idea that the workforce is just not as skilled or talented and perhaps not as knowledgeable as in times gone by. This, they say, is why our output has been increasing at a relatively slow pace even though more and more jobs are being created.

But why does it seem like we are ignoring the elephant in the room?

LOW EMPLOYEE MORALE

Low employee morale likely has something to do with the decline in productivity levels. We hear it almost every day – so many people hate their jobs. And exactly how motivated will a job-hating employee be?

The ADP Research Institute, a global research entity specialising in employee performance research, recently created the Employee Motivation and Commitment (EMC) index which measures employee morale, commitment and enthusiasm. The EMC index is derived from a monthly sentiment survey of 2,500 working adults across the United States and shows a strong relationship between worker morale and productivity. The entity found that high-productivity workers were 4.9 times more likely to respond positively to questions about their work and motivation, when surveyed, than low-productivity workers.

The point here is that an unenthused worker is likely to be an unproductive one.

The ADP Research Institute also published a report on its fourth annual ‘People at Work’ survey which collected detailed responses from nearly 35,000 people across 18 countries regarding changes in the workplace. One of the conclusions drawn from the survey was that the increase in the cost of living is influencing people’s salary expectations. In 2023, for example, survey respondents in every country overestimated what their pay increases would be for the year, which turned out to be just about 4 per cent on average.

Partly due to the cost of living increasing at a higher rate than salaries generally, people are becoming more and more disillusioned with jobs that keep them feeling like a hamster on a hamster wheel, that is, always on the go but never getting anywhere. Where it is felt that the financial compensation and other rewards associated with working are deficient in compensating for the work put in, people will likely not have the intrinsic motivation to keep performing at their best.

Solving the low-productivity issue might mean taking a much closer look at the motivation factor.

Kristen Gyles is a free-thinking public affairs opinionator. Send feedback to kristengyles@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com.