In my opinion, Sri Lanka really needs to improve productivity especially in terms of efficiency. In this case, both quality and quantity matter.
Productivity is output over a period of time. Therefore, output should encompass both quality and quantity. Automation is the best means of improving productivity. Key performance indicators for each job role would also increase productivity. However, the most crucial factor is passion for what you do. If an individual loves what he or she is doing, their productivity will increase naturally.
All in all, I feel that ‘automation’ is the best and the quickest way to improve productivity. However, the public should be given more awareness on this regard.
I agree with you, Kalharie, but then there would be an unemployment problem! I do not think that Sri Lanka and the people who are running it have thought about what happens when automation leads to job losses. They have other things on their mind and that is THEIR SURVIVAL and not ours!
Many countries around the world are thinking about this so we must do the same before it is too late.
Expenditure is one of the crucial factors of productivity and unless expenses are duly managed, it can be daunting. The following two scenarios are self-explanatory of such repercussions.
Firstly, people and organisations tend to spend a higher amount than required. So relatively, input happens to be larger than the output. Finally, the same level of output is accomplished though. Thus, this hits efficiency depriving productivity. On the contrary, if a smaller budget than required is allocated then the output, efficiency and effectiveness may be compromised.
Secondly, people tend to overlook trivial factors that generate costs while being overly alert on supposedly major cost creators. A small leak can result in wasting water, hence a rise in utility bills reducing profit margins for a business organisation or resulting in less productive cultivation in agriculture. Not knowing what creates such waste, administrators may cut costs in the wrong place, assuming that these are unnecessary and excessive. This can hinder the smooth functioning of operations.
It is not about having access to finances, but knowing the real picture behind expenses can be a stepping stone for Sri Lanka in endeavouring to improve productivity.
What will it take for Sri Lankans to improve their productivity? Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately, our motherland goes as a third world country. What is the reason for it? Don’t we have natural resources? Is there a lack of educated people or lack of workforce in this country?
My answer is no. We have huge amounts of natural resources, educated people and a huge workforce. Yet our productivity is very low. There are several reasons for it.
One of them is that we have failed to use our natural resources to improve our productivity because we do not have the proper management to handle such resources, which would help increase our productivity. Another problem is that our education system is a far too old system which we continue to use by applying temporary solutions. However, the main reason for us to fail in improving productivity is that of corruption and waste.
Today, politicians use politics to secure wealth for their families and for their future generations. In the good old days where there was less corruption and wastage, we were very successful in improving our productivity.
Nevertheless, let us think of how we can improve productivity in Sri Lanka. I am of the view that appointments should be made according to the merits of candidates for higher posts. We must have a national plan to improve productivity. This plan should continue even with a change of government; each of us must strictly stick to the policy that from today onwards we won’t waste national resources. And we must willingly act to eradicate corruption from our country. It is important to have strict guidelines and laws to combat corruption.
Unity among the people of this country is a mandatory requirement for us to improve our country’s productivity. Let us think positively that we can make our country proud if we walk together without sticking to party politics.
As much as work now runs on computerisation, success lies in how productive the automation is. There are many delays and incompatibility issues among Management Information Systems (MIS), IT systems and platforms in operation at work places. These lead to errors and redoing work. Both of these cost corporates tangibly or intangibly because of the loss of customer confidence, impaired goodwill and increased job costs due to the repetition of work.
It is a well-known fact that substantial investments are made on these systems and therefore required annual write offs are a heavy toll against profits. On top of this, the implementation of a new system requires considerable manpower and the formation of a team representing the organisation’s operations, who will work around this change. Business units or divisions may face employee shortages, disruptions and inefficiencies. All in all, it leads to drifting away from a cluster of factors which can enhance productivity.
It is a blunder of corporate management approving systems which are less user friendly where employees, as users of these systems, are compelled to work to what the systems cater to. Instead, the contrasting scenario should prevail, where systems should be serving the user (employee) needs, which align with the organisation’s information needs. Only such a background can be geared to productivity. The purpose of automation is to assist employees to work accurately, better and faster. It can then add value in achieving better productivity levels.
The term ‘productivity’ is on everybody’s lips in this time and age, be it in our homes, institutions or organisations that we serve. As Sri Lankans, we need to work hard with commitment, enhance our knowledge and sharpen our skills in order to move forward and increase our level of efficiency.
Time management is equally important. Sri Lankans are quick to pronounce: “we have no time for this task or the other.” Teamwork comes into play, as each individual’s contribution from the top to bottom is required to achieve the organisational goal, whether it is in the public or private sector.
In an organisation, there should be key performance indicators (KPI) for each job profile so that the performance of each individual can be measured against such KPIs. In this way, the remuneration package could be linked to the performance of each employee. This will also motivate employees to improve their performance. If these criteria can be achieved, the final result is that Sri Lanka will become a productive nation.
Quality thinking makes a productive nation. A country and its people need to combine the past with the present and future. This would make the best of traditional concepts, adopting them in contemporary ways that are fitting for a country. This is valid for any sector of an economy, organisations and even households.
Setting aside time free from work stress or fatigue is mandatory for quality thinking. Institutions and employees throughout the hierarchy are engrossed in routine work and get carried away with day-to-day tasks or are inclined to meet or surpass performance targets. Such trends should not be continued.
A sustainable solution that could be proposed is organisations relaxing formal cultures and rigidities, and cultivating a corporate culture that encourages a better flow of communication. Bottom-up communication and strategies could be implemented in place of the traditional top-down approach. The objective is to encourage employees to produce constructive ideas that can be taken forward with the feedback of higher authorities, creating trust and integrity among coworkers and the organisation.
Some employees may want to use this for their own selfish interests, passing the burden of projects to the initiators, harassing and exploiting such relationships to showcase their performance. As such, much responsibility lies in the hands of leaders, who should be vigilant in how these are administered.
Productivity is both efficiency (i.e. timing, input to output ratio) and being effective (i.e. doing the right thing). In many a case, a task may get stuck in the middle due to the matter not being followed up.
Due follow up can be strongly recommended to enhance efficiency especially in many organisations. Sometimes, even files cannot be located making it impossible to trace some matters. Or it may be an overlooked supplier service, which has not been taken and followed up with the respective supplier providing services to the organisation due to prolonged delays.
It is the responsibility of unit heads and supervisors to have an action plan and methodology to review work at hand on a timely basis. This may lead to better and faster service. In many instances in both the government and private sectors, employees are used to the habit of following procedures and ticking off a list of completed items. Therefore, they do not see the overall nature of the work, bottlenecks, project or task at hand. They fail to understand that each task is distinctive and is to be handled with an approach of its own.
Motivational issues too cross the path and come between ways. Employees stick to jobs for survival and may underperform when dissatisfied. Unless employees are motivated from within, they need to be stimulated with suitable incentives to motivate them to perform better. This is a follow up example on human resource.
Productivity is not about starting from the beginning but moving forward by taking apt follow up.
Too many regulatory barriers, instructions and procedure manuals lead to ‘red tape’ in organisations. In these circumstances, it is a lengthy process for the execution of duties.
On top of this, the time factor is not under the control of employees who are left to take up none other than what is instructed and documented. The latter may turn out to lack transparency and be ambiguous in the eyes of the employees and customers or stakeholders. Consequently, employees may end up treating a similar job with dual standards and probably end up with dissatisfied clients and complaints.
With limited avenues to exemplify initiative, employees too may be dissatisfied with their jobs and this may pose a risk to their careers. It is rational to raise the argument that red tape with the lengthy process mentioned above will also accumulate more waste and costs, with additional work and processing. Some employees may not thrive in a ‘red tape’ scenario; some organisations are compelled to have in place a ‘red tape’ organisational culture due to legal and regulatory framework under watchdog groups.
Yet, productivity remains as the common vision for all nations. In such a scenario, how do we strike a balance for enhancing productivity?
In my opinion, Sri Lanka really needs to improve productivity especially in terms of efficiency. In this case, both quality and quantity matter.
Productivity is output over a period of time. Therefore, output should encompass both quality and quantity. Automation is the best means of improving productivity. Key performance indicators for each job role would also increase productivity. However, the most crucial factor is passion for what you do. If an individual loves what he or she is doing, their productivity will increase naturally.
All in all, I feel that ‘automation’ is the best and the quickest way to improve productivity. However, the public should be given more awareness on this regard.
I agree with you, Kalharie, but then there would be an unemployment problem! I do not think that Sri Lanka and the people who are running it have thought about what happens when automation leads to job losses. They have other things on their mind and that is THEIR SURVIVAL and not ours!
Many countries around the world are thinking about this so we must do the same before it is too late.
Expenditure is one of the crucial factors of productivity and unless expenses are duly managed, it can be daunting. The following two scenarios are self-explanatory of such repercussions.
Firstly, people and organisations tend to spend a higher amount than required. So relatively, input happens to be larger than the output. Finally, the same level of output is accomplished though. Thus, this hits efficiency depriving productivity. On the contrary, if a smaller budget than required is allocated then the output, efficiency and effectiveness may be compromised.
Secondly, people tend to overlook trivial factors that generate costs while being overly alert on supposedly major cost creators. A small leak can result in wasting water, hence a rise in utility bills reducing profit margins for a business organisation or resulting in less productive cultivation in agriculture. Not knowing what creates such waste, administrators may cut costs in the wrong place, assuming that these are unnecessary and excessive. This can hinder the smooth functioning of operations.
It is not about having access to finances, but knowing the real picture behind expenses can be a stepping stone for Sri Lanka in endeavouring to improve productivity.
What will it take for Sri Lankans to improve their productivity? Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean. Unfortunately, our motherland goes as a third world country. What is the reason for it? Don’t we have natural resources? Is there a lack of educated people or lack of workforce in this country?
My answer is no. We have huge amounts of natural resources, educated people and a huge workforce. Yet our productivity is very low. There are several reasons for it.
One of them is that we have failed to use our natural resources to improve our productivity because we do not have the proper management to handle such resources, which would help increase our productivity. Another problem is that our education system is a far too old system which we continue to use by applying temporary solutions. However, the main reason for us to fail in improving productivity is that of corruption and waste.
Today, politicians use politics to secure wealth for their families and for their future generations. In the good old days where there was less corruption and wastage, we were very successful in improving our productivity.
Nevertheless, let us think of how we can improve productivity in Sri Lanka. I am of the view that appointments should be made according to the merits of candidates for higher posts. We must have a national plan to improve productivity. This plan should continue even with a change of government; each of us must strictly stick to the policy that from today onwards we won’t waste national resources. And we must willingly act to eradicate corruption from our country. It is important to have strict guidelines and laws to combat corruption.
Unity among the people of this country is a mandatory requirement for us to improve our country’s productivity. Let us think positively that we can make our country proud if we walk together without sticking to party politics.
As much as work now runs on computerisation, success lies in how productive the automation is. There are many delays and incompatibility issues among Management Information Systems (MIS), IT systems and platforms in operation at work places. These lead to errors and redoing work. Both of these cost corporates tangibly or intangibly because of the loss of customer confidence, impaired goodwill and increased job costs due to the repetition of work.
It is a well-known fact that substantial investments are made on these systems and therefore required annual write offs are a heavy toll against profits. On top of this, the implementation of a new system requires considerable manpower and the formation of a team representing the organisation’s operations, who will work around this change. Business units or divisions may face employee shortages, disruptions and inefficiencies. All in all, it leads to drifting away from a cluster of factors which can enhance productivity.
It is a blunder of corporate management approving systems which are less user friendly where employees, as users of these systems, are compelled to work to what the systems cater to. Instead, the contrasting scenario should prevail, where systems should be serving the user (employee) needs, which align with the organisation’s information needs. Only such a background can be geared to productivity. The purpose of automation is to assist employees to work accurately, better and faster. It can then add value in achieving better productivity levels.
The term ‘productivity’ is on everybody’s lips in this time and age, be it in our homes, institutions or organisations that we serve. As Sri Lankans, we need to work hard with commitment, enhance our knowledge and sharpen our skills in order to move forward and increase our level of efficiency.
Time management is equally important. Sri Lankans are quick to pronounce: “we have no time for this task or the other.” Teamwork comes into play, as each individual’s contribution from the top to bottom is required to achieve the organisational goal, whether it is in the public or private sector.
In an organisation, there should be key performance indicators (KPI) for each job profile so that the performance of each individual can be measured against such KPIs. In this way, the remuneration package could be linked to the performance of each employee. This will also motivate employees to improve their performance. If these criteria can be achieved, the final result is that Sri Lanka will become a productive nation.
Quality thinking makes a productive nation. A country and its people need to combine the past with the present and future. This would make the best of traditional concepts, adopting them in contemporary ways that are fitting for a country. This is valid for any sector of an economy, organisations and even households.
Setting aside time free from work stress or fatigue is mandatory for quality thinking. Institutions and employees throughout the hierarchy are engrossed in routine work and get carried away with day-to-day tasks or are inclined to meet or surpass performance targets. Such trends should not be continued.
A sustainable solution that could be proposed is organisations relaxing formal cultures and rigidities, and cultivating a corporate culture that encourages a better flow of communication. Bottom-up communication and strategies could be implemented in place of the traditional top-down approach. The objective is to encourage employees to produce constructive ideas that can be taken forward with the feedback of higher authorities, creating trust and integrity among coworkers and the organisation.
Some employees may want to use this for their own selfish interests, passing the burden of projects to the initiators, harassing and exploiting such relationships to showcase their performance. As such, much responsibility lies in the hands of leaders, who should be vigilant in how these are administered.
Productivity is both efficiency (i.e. timing, input to output ratio) and being effective (i.e. doing the right thing). In many a case, a task may get stuck in the middle due to the matter not being followed up.
Due follow up can be strongly recommended to enhance efficiency especially in many organisations. Sometimes, even files cannot be located making it impossible to trace some matters. Or it may be an overlooked supplier service, which has not been taken and followed up with the respective supplier providing services to the organisation due to prolonged delays.
It is the responsibility of unit heads and supervisors to have an action plan and methodology to review work at hand on a timely basis. This may lead to better and faster service. In many instances in both the government and private sectors, employees are used to the habit of following procedures and ticking off a list of completed items. Therefore, they do not see the overall nature of the work, bottlenecks, project or task at hand. They fail to understand that each task is distinctive and is to be handled with an approach of its own.
Motivational issues too cross the path and come between ways. Employees stick to jobs for survival and may underperform when dissatisfied. Unless employees are motivated from within, they need to be stimulated with suitable incentives to motivate them to perform better. This is a follow up example on human resource.
Productivity is not about starting from the beginning but moving forward by taking apt follow up.
This is well said. I agree.
Too many regulatory barriers, instructions and procedure manuals lead to ‘red tape’ in organisations. In these circumstances, it is a lengthy process for the execution of duties.
On top of this, the time factor is not under the control of employees who are left to take up none other than what is instructed and documented. The latter may turn out to lack transparency and be ambiguous in the eyes of the employees and customers or stakeholders. Consequently, employees may end up treating a similar job with dual standards and probably end up with dissatisfied clients and complaints.
With limited avenues to exemplify initiative, employees too may be dissatisfied with their jobs and this may pose a risk to their careers. It is rational to raise the argument that red tape with the lengthy process mentioned above will also accumulate more waste and costs, with additional work and processing. Some employees may not thrive in a ‘red tape’ scenario; some organisations are compelled to have in place a ‘red tape’ organisational culture due to legal and regulatory framework under watchdog groups.
Yet, productivity remains as the common vision for all nations. In such a scenario, how do we strike a balance for enhancing productivity?