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[h=2]Productivity in Singapore on the decline[/h]
June 15th, 2013 |
Author: Contributions
In the news, the productivity rate in Singapore on the
decline even through the our GDP is increasing with ever-increasing of workforce mainly
from other countries.
Based on Wikipedia:
Productivity is the ratio of output to inputs in
production; it is a measure of the efficiency of production.
Productivity has many benefits. At the national level, productivity growth raises living standards because more real
income improves people’s ability to purchase goods and services, enjoy
leisure, improve housing and education and contribute to social and
environmental programs. Productivity growth is important to the firm because
more real income means that the firm can meet its (perhaps growing) obligations
to customers, suppliers, workers, shareholders, and governments (taxes and
regulation), and still remain competitive or even improve its competitiveness in
the market place.
So the main question is: Why there is a decline in productivity
despite more manpower and employee putting in man hours?
According the Gilbert Goh in transitioning .org, our workers are overly
exploited. Yes, it’s overly exploited!!! I have come across PMET
working every day from 9am till 1am the next day and the pay is pathetic.
Now I’m not going to talk about pay in here. I’m more interested in the real
reason behind the decline of productivity decline.
1) More foreigner than local. Lots of foreigners are coming to
Singapore to work.
We all know that in the service sectors like food industry, phone operators,
construction worker and PMET. We don’t hate foreigners but the rate of
foreigners coming into Singapore at such an astonishing rate, thus skill level
of the foreigners are on the decline.
Quoting an example, in the telephone operators, mainly operated by the Pinoy
and the Indian, like LTA, Banks, Singtel etc. Ask yourself a question: How many
time do you need to call the operators to solve your problem comparing 10 years
ago and now?
For me, I had to call Singtel, or DBS at least 2 to 3 times before my problem
is solved. That why, today I only speaks to local operators.
Companies are arguing that local do not want to be telephone operators.
Somewhat I agreed. Being a phone operator, they need to endure to nasty and rude
customers. That’s not the main problem. The main problem is the pay. How much do
the company willing to pay before a local consider this as a job? Less than a
thousand dollars pay will continue let the companies into difficulties in
getting locals to work in that industry.
Why not the companies pay a bit more like $1500 to $2000 to engage the local
to work as telephone operators? As telephone operators are “Cost Center” to
them, they would like to minimise the cost as low as possible. But in return,
they had a trade-off of low productivity. This translate into productivity cost
the company itself and productivity of the caller as well.
Also another reason the could be: telephone operators (foreign
operators) work with their head but not their soul (This is what I feel). They
do not really understand what our problem well and we had to repeat and repeat
again to get the message through.
This kind of problems we had faced day-in day-out in today’s context. Not
just in the telephone operators but in the service industry .
2) Too many Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)
In order to safe guard the company or industry interest, there is always a
SOP for all to follow. Don’t get me wrong! SOP is a must have to safe guard the
interest of the company. But complicated SOP will sometime leads to employee
confused themselves. Thus they need to ask around to make sure that they
are following the SOP closely. This is total waste of time and man hours for the
company.
A general and simple SOP will enough for all the employee to follows thus
allowing more free play by the employees and easy understanding by them. Reduce
unnecessary paperwork so they can cut their workload in a single case.
3) Top-down micro management
The top management do not really trust their subordinates and any questions
and procedure that are out of the SOP need to sought the approval from the
management. This create an unnecessary time wastage as subordinates are afraid
of infringing the SOP set down by the management.
Sometime, when a decision finalised and pass the information down. Often than
not, subordinates just follows and don’t question them. They are afraid to bring
out the concern to the management about the decision made mainly afraid of
offending their management.
Communication is a two-way thing and it is not a top-down communication.
Management should not feel threaten when a concern raised.
4) Job Hopping
There is a trend that job hopping is on the raise. This really bring down the
productivity rate of the company as they need to hire new staff, train them all
over again to get them familiarise with the working system in the company.
Company should work together with the employees. It must treat the employees
as a family members. Employees must have balance work-life. Employees are not
the slave of the company and don’t expect them to serve you 24/7. They have
their families too. Money is never the major issue if the company creates a good
work-life environment for their employees.
Why people job hopped is mainly due to work stress and lack of work-life
balance. Money is another reason that people job-hopped, given all companies
lack of work-life balance, they will choose the company with the higher
compensation of their pay.
Given a choice, would an employee work-life balance company job hopped to
another company that offer slightly higher package but with higher stress level
and lack of work-life balance? Most properly not as they will tend to enjoy
their work in the current company than going to other company. People will also
resist changes to their current lifestyle (if given a work-life balance
environment).
In order to increase productivity of the company, work-life balance is the
way to go. Companies should treat their employees as family, retain staff and
open management (open discussion with subordinates). Without all these factors,
GDP will only continue to increase with the ever-increasing manpower.
.
New Bird
* The author blogs at http://mrnewbird.wordpress.com/
decline even through the our GDP is increasing with ever-increasing of workforce mainly
from other countries.
Based on Wikipedia:
Productivity is the ratio of output to inputs in
production; it is a measure of the efficiency of production.
Productivity has many benefits. At the national level, productivity growth raises living standards because more real
income improves people’s ability to purchase goods and services, enjoy
leisure, improve housing and education and contribute to social and
environmental programs. Productivity growth is important to the firm because
more real income means that the firm can meet its (perhaps growing) obligations
to customers, suppliers, workers, shareholders, and governments (taxes and
regulation), and still remain competitive or even improve its competitiveness in
the market place.
So the main question is: Why there is a decline in productivity
despite more manpower and employee putting in man hours?
According the Gilbert Goh in transitioning .org, our workers are overly
exploited. Yes, it’s overly exploited!!! I have come across PMET
working every day from 9am till 1am the next day and the pay is pathetic.
Now I’m not going to talk about pay in here. I’m more interested in the real
reason behind the decline of productivity decline.
1) More foreigner than local. Lots of foreigners are coming to
Singapore to work.
We all know that in the service sectors like food industry, phone operators,
construction worker and PMET. We don’t hate foreigners but the rate of
foreigners coming into Singapore at such an astonishing rate, thus skill level
of the foreigners are on the decline.
Quoting an example, in the telephone operators, mainly operated by the Pinoy
and the Indian, like LTA, Banks, Singtel etc. Ask yourself a question: How many
time do you need to call the operators to solve your problem comparing 10 years
ago and now?
For me, I had to call Singtel, or DBS at least 2 to 3 times before my problem
is solved. That why, today I only speaks to local operators.
Companies are arguing that local do not want to be telephone operators.
Somewhat I agreed. Being a phone operator, they need to endure to nasty and rude
customers. That’s not the main problem. The main problem is the pay. How much do
the company willing to pay before a local consider this as a job? Less than a
thousand dollars pay will continue let the companies into difficulties in
getting locals to work in that industry.
Why not the companies pay a bit more like $1500 to $2000 to engage the local
to work as telephone operators? As telephone operators are “Cost Center” to
them, they would like to minimise the cost as low as possible. But in return,
they had a trade-off of low productivity. This translate into productivity cost
the company itself and productivity of the caller as well.
Also another reason the could be: telephone operators (foreign
operators) work with their head but not their soul (This is what I feel). They
do not really understand what our problem well and we had to repeat and repeat
again to get the message through.
This kind of problems we had faced day-in day-out in today’s context. Not
just in the telephone operators but in the service industry .
2) Too many Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)
In order to safe guard the company or industry interest, there is always a
SOP for all to follow. Don’t get me wrong! SOP is a must have to safe guard the
interest of the company. But complicated SOP will sometime leads to employee
confused themselves. Thus they need to ask around to make sure that they
are following the SOP closely. This is total waste of time and man hours for the
company.
A general and simple SOP will enough for all the employee to follows thus
allowing more free play by the employees and easy understanding by them. Reduce
unnecessary paperwork so they can cut their workload in a single case.
3) Top-down micro management
The top management do not really trust their subordinates and any questions
and procedure that are out of the SOP need to sought the approval from the
management. This create an unnecessary time wastage as subordinates are afraid
of infringing the SOP set down by the management.
Sometime, when a decision finalised and pass the information down. Often than
not, subordinates just follows and don’t question them. They are afraid to bring
out the concern to the management about the decision made mainly afraid of
offending their management.
Communication is a two-way thing and it is not a top-down communication.
Management should not feel threaten when a concern raised.
4) Job Hopping
There is a trend that job hopping is on the raise. This really bring down the
productivity rate of the company as they need to hire new staff, train them all
over again to get them familiarise with the working system in the company.
Company should work together with the employees. It must treat the employees
as a family members. Employees must have balance work-life. Employees are not
the slave of the company and don’t expect them to serve you 24/7. They have
their families too. Money is never the major issue if the company creates a good
work-life environment for their employees.
Why people job hopped is mainly due to work stress and lack of work-life
balance. Money is another reason that people job-hopped, given all companies
lack of work-life balance, they will choose the company with the higher
compensation of their pay.
Given a choice, would an employee work-life balance company job hopped to
another company that offer slightly higher package but with higher stress level
and lack of work-life balance? Most properly not as they will tend to enjoy
their work in the current company than going to other company. People will also
resist changes to their current lifestyle (if given a work-life balance
environment).
In order to increase productivity of the company, work-life balance is the
way to go. Companies should treat their employees as family, retain staff and
open management (open discussion with subordinates). Without all these factors,
GDP will only continue to increase with the ever-increasing manpower.
.
New Bird
* The author blogs at http://mrnewbird.wordpress.com/
