Public holiday, party and productivity

The first two are old friends, often seen together. Raise your hand if you haven’t been to work since last week Wednesday or Friday.

Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of company, with all the Trinbagonians who applied for days off, sick leave, casual leave or just plain didn’t bother to show up to work the day before and/or the day after the Corpus Christi holiday. This past Monday off for Labour Day and another day for Indian Arrival Day brings the holiday tally for June up to three.

Discussion about the third P, judging from the lack of academic study of, or statistics on the phenomenon, is a thing nobody seems to like. Unless you’re a business owner or employer.

The Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Commerce has had plenty to say on how worker absenteeism of this kind affects the productivity of businesses: “We do know from anecdotal evidence provided by some of our members, that this is indeed a serious problem in the workplace.

Yet another example of the challenges employers face can be seen when workers extend a long weekend by calling in sick the day right before or after the holiday, or simply by their arriving late for work. The abuse of leave ‘entitlements’ appears to be on the rise as more and more full use of sick or casual leave come to be erroneously regarded as ‘rights’.

“The hospitality and retail sectors are usually hardest hit by this phenomenon with unplanned absences severely affecting operations and causing those who are at work to be stretched to their limits.

The result is usually poor and inefficient customer service rearing its ugly head above the real root causes!” At a 2011 workshop on managing employee absenteeism, the Chamber’s feature speaker said, “High member response to the invitation to participate in the aforementioned workshop pointed to recognition that employee absenteeism is an area of concern…” The article on the event went on to say that work culture needed to be changed so employees could shift their focus on “from being absent from work at every opportunity, to attending work regularly and punctually and being productive when they are at work.” The Chamber noted that while the energy sector produces 32 per cent of this country’s GDP, while employing only three per cent of its workers, other sectors employed 97 per cent of this country’s labour force, while producing 68 per cent of GDP.

It gets worse.

At a seminar last year, the Employers Consultative Association revealed that TT had the fifth highest level of absenteeism in the world.

The World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index 2016-2017 says poor national work ethic is the number one drawback for ease of doing business in TT. In 2011, it was the third.

TT also ranks 73 out of 138 countries for the relationship between pay and productivity, and 137 out of 138 for labour employer relations.

At what cost is the country continuing in this mode? Particularly given our economic realities? How do we raise productivity faced with these challenges? One suggestion put forward, has been to simply reduce the number of holidays.

This country has 14 public holidays, 15 this year with the one off being given to the First People’s in October, plus Carnival Monday and Tuesday, which are not official public holidays, but on which most people do not work.

This of course will require negotiation between TT multiethinic, multi-religious groups.

Another suggestion has been to let all of the holidays stay, but let them only be celebrated by the group they are connected with. This means that it is a regular day at work for everyone else.

But beyond absenteeism at holiday time, the figures show that regular workday productivity is a problem as well. Even when workers are showing up, they aren’t getting much done.

More extensive academic study of productivity in this country, how it is to be calculated and its drivers needs to be done. This is the basis on which subsequent improvements need to be made.

Additionally, it must be considered, why are Trinbagonians so work adverse, at least in their own country? It is unlikely that the issue stems only from the workers’ end.

Employers too may need to consider how they are contributing to the problem.