Getting busy

Many hands make light work, or so the common adage tells us. But then again, too many cooks can easily spoil the business broth.

In reality, businesses come in all shapes and sizes. It often doesn’t actually matter how many people are involved, as long as each one is contributing as much as possible to the whole. Giving workers the best equipment, processes and skills is the most-favoured method of economic growth, across both nations and individual organisations. It’s productivity that is the key. And that’s a metric that all of Singapore – particularly its HR professionals – will now be focusing on over at least the next ten years.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has called for a national target of 2-3% annual productivity growth over the next decade. Taking the longest view, that will mean every employee in Singapore should be contributing at least 20% more to the national economy by 2020: not impossible but certainly a significant goal.

Prime Minister Lee says space restraints are now limiting the island’s intake of foreign talent, which will put a dampener on the country’s economic growth. “Importing fewer foreign workers does not mean less competition for Singaporeans, because our real competitors are out there in the world, and not here among us,” he said during his annual Chinese New Year address. “Instead it means that our workers have to work harder to upgrade ourselves.

“Only when every citizen is well-trained, and is continually improving his skills and know-how, will Singapore do well, and every citizen better his life. Upgrading productivity is therefore a vital task.”

Productivity carrots

The Prime Minister’s words were backed up by policy just a few weeks later. Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam unveiled the 2010 national budget, announcing some $7 billion worth of incentive schemes to transform the island’s economy in line with the new productivity goals.

Among the “carrots” that he hopes will encourage employers to both develop their workforces and build innovative new systems to get the most out of them are:

»        $2.5 billion over five years for enhancing the national Continuing Education and Training System

»        Tax deductibility for investments in productivity and innovation schemes

»        $1 billion for a National Productivity Fund, offering grants to help business improve efficiency

Minister Tharman says the country risks being left behind if it does not use the recovery period to make strong economic gains.

“Every employer must take the initiative,” he told Parliament during the budget presentation. “They have to redesign jobs to make their employees more productive, and keep asking how they can help their people accomplish more.”

Topping off the productivity-targeting budget measures was the introduction of a new National Productivity and Continuing Education Council, to be chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean. This will oversee the above spending promises and consider new measures to further enhance the national workforce.

Deputy Prime Minister Teo says the 2-3% target is achievable but will take a great deal of cooperation throughout the economy. “Companies need to take the lead,” he said. “Workers also need to take ownership for their own upgrading and the Government has a lot of work to do in the facilitation.”

Reaction

It is still early days, but employers do appear to be heeding the call to arms. HR professionals speaking with HRM were not yet able to state exactly how, but most planned to take advantage of the grants, subsidies and tax concessions available.

For Chiu Wu Hong, Executive Director, KPMG Tax Services, the budget offers a “bittersweet” combination of carrots and sticks to get businesses on board. On one hand, he expects an enthusiastic take up of most of the incentives available. “The productivity measures, especially the Productivity and Innovation Credit scheme, are generous,” he said. “They should provide sufficient, attractive incentives for companies to invest in research and development work to increase productivity.”

But that doesn’t mean the schemes could not be tweaked or improved, in order to ensure access to employers of all sizes. “Under the Productivity and Innovation credit scheme, businesses have the option of converting the tax benefits to cash grants of up to $21,000. We believe that there was scope to better target this cash conversion feature so that the amount of cash grants received by smaller companies could be increased.”

How to for HR?

So what should HR professionals be doing to boost workforce productivity? Unsurprisingly, they are going to have to get busy themselves. They’ll need to look hard at their own organisations – the systems, processes and people involved – to find ways to achieve more output with the same, or even less, resources.

In many cases, further training and staff development will be high on the agenda. Just as the Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience helped many businesses to improve their workforce capabilities during the recession, so too will the enhanced Continuing Education system help maintain that enthusiasm for ongoing development during the recovery.

“This will put us into a virtuous cycle: building superior skills, quality jobs and higher incomes,” Minister Tharman says.

David Allen, a US-based productivity consultant, says time management is another key area for HR to consider, particularly when dealing with knowledge workers. He notes that one of the quickest ways to a productivity gain is to undertake retrenchments – those left behind will often fill the vacuum and produce significantly more output on an individual basis.

That may not be the best long-term approach, but he says the vacuum principle can act as a guide to encourage more effective use of time throughout an organisation. Given Singapore has recently been found to work the longest hours (2307 per year on average) of anywhere in the world, the idea certainly has merit in the island-state and could provide a significant jump towards the 30% growth goal.

“If I could sit down with everyone in Singapore, we could instantly improve productivity by much more than 3%,”Allen tells HRM. His “Getting Things Done” provides a basic methodology for analysing work requirements, the goals they are designed to achieve, and the resources used to make them happen.

He says it’s about stepping back and maintaining a connection to the end goal, something he advocates knowledge workers to do on a regular basis. “People need to manage the relationship between what’s on their mind and getting it done,” he says, noting that a weekly realignment is often the best way to stay on track. “There are a lot of very practical things that a weekly review does to make sure your system is glued together.”

Allen has worked with a long list of US-based executives, including the senior leadership of GE. While any move to increase the time productivity of knowledge workers will require them to initially invest time and effort, he says the payoff is immediate, effective and long-lasting.

“It’s not rocket science,” he says. “But we have found a way to train for behaviours that many organisations hold up as the ideal.”

Whose job is it anyway?

Looking at every role and finding opportunities for improvement is a big job, particularly given the size of some multinational organisations operating from Singapore. But it’s certainly an important one. As it turns out, HR is often the best-placed function to complete such an assessment effectively and efficiently.

This is because HR should already have an understanding of the tools at its disposal – whether that amounts to training and development options, new systems, improved equipment, or even a rationalisation or reorganisation of resources. It can therefore offer specialist advice to senior organisational leaders on the best way to make a lasting productivity impact.

Andrea Ross, Managing Director of Robert Walters in Singapore, says productivity is something HR is often striving for regardless of the rest of the country. Not only does it improve the bottom line goals of the organisation, it makes for happier, healthier and more engaged and enthusiastic workers. That then feeds into an improved employer brand and access to better talent from both here and around the world. “For companies to stay ahead of their competitors, achieve their goals, and reach full productivity, they require the ability of a true HR leader who has the capabilities to put systematic programs in place and attract and retain top talent,” she says.