Productivity awareness week 2013-Reasons why people are less productive |19 March 2013

The Ministry of Labour and Human Resource Development, for example, continuously receives the following complaints from employees, which they feel hinder their productivity:

1. Bad leadership and management styles
2. Poor working conditions and work methods
3. Absence of incentives, performance management and reward system
4. Limited work measurement and related pay 
5. Lack of training opportunities
6. Poor or inadequate communication
7. Lack of human resources

Employers also bring reports to the ministry in relation to their employees not being productive due to the following factors:

1. Mediocrity
2. Lateness
3. Malingering and low quality work output
4. Unnecessary sick leave
5. Wastage in terms of time and resources
6. Alcohol abuse and,
7. Absenteeism and “Presentism” which means just being present at the workplace without producing to required standards.

The grievances lodged by employers and employees are usually because of one or more of the factors mentioned above as can be seen from the Table for Registered Grievance cases by industry and gender from January to December 2012 (Source: Policy Planning and Research Section, Ministry of Labour and Human Resource Development).

The Ministry of Labour and Human Resource Development is engaged to continuously implement educational campaigns to educate and inform employers and employees of their rights and responsibilities in the work place.

In this effort, it is important for people to work in an efficient manner in order to be able to produce more.  This is a call on all of us to double our efforts to increase national productivity.