Raphael John-Lall

Giv­en the chal­lenges with the lev­els of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in T&T, a four-day work week may not be the best op­tion for the coun­try at this mo­ment ac­cord­ing to the views of some of the coun­try’s busi­ness lead­ers.

Fol­low­ing the grow­ing trend glob­al­ly, Ger­many, Eu­rope’s largest econ­o­my has just start­ed a tri­al where em­ploy­ees from se­lect com­pa­nies will work for four days with the same salary.

The Em­ploy­ers’ Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA), T&T’s largest em­ploy­er-um­brel­la or­gan­i­sa­tion in a state­ment to Sun­day Busi­ness said it is not sure that the do­mes­tic econ­o­my is ready for the four-day work week con­cept.

“While in prin­ci­ple we are not op­posed to the idea of a four-day work week, we are not cer­tain that present­ly our econ­o­my is ready to em­brace a shift of this mag­ni­tude and its po­ten­tial chal­lenges. The four-day work week has been main­ly tri­alled with­in de­vel­oped economies – which are of­ten un­der­pinned by high pro­duc­tiv­i­ty rank­ings. With­in the con­text of T&T, our mech­a­nisms for mea­sur­ing work­place pro­duc­tiv­i­ty are lack­ing and so we do not have a full scope on where we stand as a na­tion.”

The ECA al­so said that to its knowl­edge, no com­pa­ny in T&T has start­ed such tri­als or has shown any in­ter­est in do­ing that.

The ECA said that the suc­cess of a four-day work week all de­pends up­on the na­tion­al con­text par­tic­u­lar­ly the ro­bust­ness of ex­ist­ing labour poli­cies that dri­ve pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, in­no­va­tion and com­pet­i­tive­ness as well as the more im­plic­it el­e­ments of a so­ci­ety such as norms and cul­tur­al val­ues.

“More­over, a four-day work week, re­quires some lev­el of give and take and the will­ing­ness to make com­pro­mis­es. In some in­stances, there might be the re­quire­ment to com­press the stan­dard 40 hours in­to four days, while on the oth­er hand, there might be the need to re­duce salaries if few­er days are to be worked, to bet­ter man­age op­er­a­tional over­heads of the or­gan­i­sa­tion. Fur­ther­more, it al­so is counter-in­tu­itive to con­sid­er im­ple­ment­ing a four-day work week when there are some every­day chal­lenges that hin­der pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.”

Ac­cord­ing to the ECA, one of the strongest ar­gu­ments that var­i­ous think tanks and polic mak­ers have put for­ward in sup­port of a four-day work week, is that it im­proves hu­man well be­ing – and sub­se­quent­ly their abil­i­ty to work.

“How­ev­er, there are many oth­er fac­tors which im­pact well-be­ing. As re­vealed in a re­cent­ly pub­lished study by Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC,) 69 per cent of peo­ple said that traf­fic con­ges­tion af­fect­ed their phys­i­cal health while 64 per cent re­port­ed ex­pe­ri­enc­ing stress each work­day due to traf­fic con­ges­tions.

“This study al­so high­light­ed that 33 days, the equiv­a­lent of one month per year, is lost due to traf­fic con­ges­tion. It is im­per­a­tive that we first ad­dress is­sues like these be­fore we can even en­gage in con­ver­sa­tions on a re­duced work­week, which in it­self does not nec­es­sar­i­ly guar­an­tee a se­ri­ous re­duc­tion in traf­fic con­ges­tions as the work­ing pop­u­la­tion may still need to be on the road five days a week for oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties, such as trans­port­ing chil­dren to and from school.”

T&T’s top em­ploy­er body al­so said the coun­try al­so needs to be mind­ful that a four-day week, or any re­duced type of work week, brings with it a se­ries of unique chal­lenges for some type of sec­tors.

“This will not be a ho­moge­nous arrange­ment across all or­gan­i­sa­tions, as dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es stand to be im­pact­ed dif­fer­ent­ly by this. Take for ex­am­ple the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor – where work­ers of­ten op­er­ate on sep­a­rate shifts. Un­der a four-day work­week, this would need to be fur­ther stream­lined in such a way that fac­to­ry op­er­a­tions are not dis­rupt­ed. A four-day work week would al­so not be fea­si­ble for cer­tain in­dus­tries, where sup­port ser­vices are es­sen­tial to busi­ness op­er­a­tions. For ex­am­ple, with­in the ICT sec­tor, sup­port is an on-de­mand ser­vice and op­er­a­tions of­ten need to cov­er a five-day work week and some­times be­yond.”

There are oth­er fac­tors to con­sid­er such as time off and leave, in con­sid­er­ing a four-day work week, the ECA said.

“In con­sid­er­ing the im­pact of a four-day work week, we al­so need to con­sid­er pro­vi­sions for leave. How then would this im­pact forms of leave such as ca­su­al and va­ca­tion leave? To fur­ther com­pound the com­plex­i­ty of a four-day work week is al­so the fact that T&T is among the high­est in the world for pub­lic hol­i­days – which al­ready im­pact na­tion­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and eco­nom­ic out­put. That is not to say that a four-day work week is in any way detri­men­tal to an or­gan­i­sa­tion and one can ar­gue that it can even stream­line in­no­v­a­tive prac­tices.”

The ECA said im­ple­ment­ing such a sys­tem in T&T would re­quire di­a­logue among sec­tors in the coun­try.

“As we en­gage in con­ver­sa­tions on oth­er modal­i­ties of work, we al­so have to ac­knowl­edge that var­i­ous non-tra­di­tion­al forms of work have in­creas­ing­ly be­come pop­u­lar over the years with­in T&T. Re­mote-work and flexi-time are oth­er pop­u­lar modes of work and if im­ple­ment­ed cor­rect­ly, can al­low for bet­ter work-life bal­ance. In­deed, the so­cial prob­lem of traf­fic con­ges­tion with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go has reignit­ed a call by some busi­ness cham­bers to­wards more con­sid­er­a­tion to be giv­en to re­mote work op­tions. Sim­i­lar­ly, flexi-time arrange­ments, when used with­in rea­son, can al­so boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and re­duce late com­ing. A four-day work­day or any oth­er non- tra­di­tion­al form of work is not with­out its ben­e­fits and draw­backs.”

Im­pact on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty

Pres­i­dent. Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce (GS­FCC) Ki­ran Singh told Sun­day Busi­ness that for T&T, a small de­vel­op­ing is­land econ­o­my, adopt­ing busi­ness prac­tices from more de­vel­oped economies with­out mod­i­fy­ing them may not be ide­al.

He point­ed out that the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els in Ger­many are very dif­fer­ent to T&T and there are many com­plex fac­tors that must be con­sid­ered to even be­gin to im­ple­ment such a sys­tem.

“It is easy to say, adopt a four-day work week in our coun­try, but there are many fac­tors to con­sid­er. Do we share the same work eth­ic as some of the afore­men­tioned coun­tries? Is it that all busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ment of­fices will be closed on the fifth day? How will shift work­ers ben­e­fit from such a sys­tem? What man­age­ment sys­tems/lo­gis­tics will be put in place to en­sure that the ‘100-80-100 sys­tem’ is ad­hered to? While there has been some suc­cess in some of the pi­lot pro­grammes, they were iso­lat­ed to larg­er con­glom­er­ates and a small num­ber of gov­ern­ment work­ers. These ex­per­i­ments were short-term. Pro­longed tri­als are now be­ing im­ple­ment­ed, and we await the da­ta.”

He said com­pa­nies with­in the SME frame­work do not pos­sess the nec­es­sary re­sources to pi­lot these pro­grammes, which means that Gov­ern­ment in­ter­ven­tion via cash in­jec­tions would be re­quired to launch this ex­per­i­ment.

“We are faced with sev­er­al lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges to im­ple­ment such a sys­tem. It would ne­ces­si­tate im­prov­ing the trans­porta­tion net­work, re­duc­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion and deal­ing with the ram­pant crime wave.

An­oth­er op­tion, and a more fea­si­ble one, may be the 9:80 sys­tem in which a full two weeks work (80 hours) is done in nine days. This has proven to be ef­fec­tive in quite a few lo­cal en­er­gy-based com­pa­nies. Work­ers meet their dead­lines and quo­ta of work and are giv­en every oth­er Fri­day off. It al­so means that the com­pa­ny is not closed for busi­ness on Fri­days but rather run on half the com­pli­ment of staff.”

He said T&T’s work cul­ture has to change dra­mat­i­cal­ly for this to even be con­sid­ered.

“In the pub­lic ser­vice for ex­am­ple, cashiers are no­to­ri­ous for clos­ing at 3pm and at lunch time, late ar­rivals and ear­ly de­par­tures are the norm. Many per­sons have left this coun­try seek­ing a bet­ter life abroad and worked not one but two jobs. Why can’t we demon­strate this lev­el of ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment with­in our own bor­ders?”

He al­so point­ed out that T&T is ranked in the top 10 coun­tries for the most hol­i­days in the world and there is al­so the Car­ni­val sea­son when pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els are known to di­min­ish.

“We would have to un­der­go a whole na­tion­wide re­train­ing of the work­force, pos­si­bly start­ing at the school lev­el to in­cul­cate a strong, pos­i­tive work eth­ic among the pop­u­la­tion.”