Longer working hours, productivity: there is no correlation

We have a lot to thank the Industrial Revolution for including innovations, efficiency, and the infamous 9am-5pm working hours per week.

The idea of spending one-third of your life at work (which is even more when you consider the fact that many people work 6 days a week in low and middle income countries) is being scrupulously scrutinised especially post COVID-19 which showed that the world would still exist if we work from home.

While the debate of class struggle and their role in establishing the 9am-5pm work day is enriching and exposes the fault lines in the contemporary work culture, I intend to highlight that the world is moving beyond this mundane cycle.

Average productivity growth in country quite low: study

Pakistan needs to embrace ideas like productivity and efficiency while adopt a result-oriented approach.

People used to work around 70 hours per week in the 1800s. With 6 days a week that amounts to almost 12 hours per day. But as things improved the work hours began to decrease – Robert Whaples, Professor at Wake Forest University, has prepared a detailed timeline of this evolution. The modern day workday was established by Henry Ford at Ford Motor Company in 1926 where people worked 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

But this isn’t the 1970s and things have changed.

Recently, UK conducted the biggest trial for a four day work week with astonishing (not really) results. For instance, 89 percent of the firms were still operating under the new policy and 51 percent had decided to permanently change their work hours to 4 day a week. The employees reported better work-life balances and the firms registered increased productivity.

Working for longer hours has no correlation with productivity - an idea that has managed to escape the majority of people especially here in Pakistan. The lack of productivity or the presence thereof is one of the most important deciding factors for the US to be the largest economy in the world or for China’s ascent as the next superpower.

Between 1979-94, productivity in China increased 3.9 percent annually and in the 1990s, the share of productivity in output was more than 50 percent!

In Pakistan, the average worker produces 40 percent more value than it used to 30 years ago. In comparison, in Vietnam (a country with less than half size of Pakistan and only 100 million in population) the average worker is 323 percent more productive - a staggering 8 times increase when compared to Pakistan.

Pakistan needs productivity-enhancing reforms: World Bank

Moreover, foreign firms in Pakistan are 46 percent more productive than local ones. In the past decade, the ratio of exporters in publicly listed companies have declined from 60 to 51 with a share of export in sales to 27 percent from 31 percent.

According to an economist from Bristol University, Pakistan’s labour productivity increased only by 45 percent between 1990 to 2018 which amounts to a paltry 1.33 percent increase per annum.

Meanwhile, other South Asian economies managed to more than double their productivity - Bangladesh with 191 percent and India 263 percent.

Despite the glaring significance of productivity when was the last time you heard this topic being discussed on our TV media? Chances are you didn’t. Our focus needs to be recalibrated.

It’s not how many hours you work but how much work you do in those hours.

Take a leaf from Cal Newport’s book ‘Deep Work’ which, as per the author, is ‘becoming increasingly valuable but also very rare’. It underlines the importance of work-life balance, productivity and how to make the most of your time by enhancing and improving ones focus!

There is a strange misconception in Pakistan that people in developed countries work more than us. Factually, the truth is the opposite. According to a paper ‘Global Inequality of Hourly Income, 1980-2020’ the number of hours worked has steadily decreased in all regions except for Asia.

The average income in Switzerland is 20 times higher than Cambodia however they work 900 hours less than their Cambodian counterparts.

However, when you share these findings with others in Pakistan, chances are the response you are going to get is: “Pakistan main nahi ho sakta” (This cannot work in Pakistan). That is emblematic of the defeatist mindset that many people nurture - some are vocal about it some aren’t but mostly believe it.

The idea here is not to stop working hard.

For millennia, hard work and dedication remain the keys to success and for decades to come, it will be the same. However, what is required is a change of perspective.

Recalibration of focus and regulate our approach. If we focus on whether a person is working 12 hours a day or staying late after the office, it doesn’t mean they are working hard. They might be wasting time or being inefficient at their jobs.

We need to focus on inculcating technological innovation as it is the linchpin that will help workers here in Pakistan in particular and developing world in general, to live their life and be a more productive member of society.

Let’s stop obsessing over hours and become more result oriented.

The article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Recorder or its owners