Recently there has been a lot of discussion about how hard our youngsters should work to ensure a good nation building. I would also like to join the discussion.
Let us look at various categories of people.
Working people:
People in Information technology are already working for 70 hours a week or even more. With work from home happening the thin line between home and office is erased.
Manufacturing people are predominantly working for 70 hours a week or more. You can see many of them even on a Sunday or weekly off day at work.
People in Construction industry work for a lot of time in a week and the work conditions also is not very good. By the nature of work, these people work in very harsh conditions.
Health workers are perhaps one of the most hard-working categories. The Doctors are one of the most hard-working professionals.
The people in the Gig industry are working under very harsh working conditions and working long hours to earn a decent amount of money.
We can talk about more industries. People in all industries are working hard. Maybe more than 70 hours a week.
Entrepreneurs:
Again, this category of people are always hard working. They may be
working almost for more than 80 hours a week.
Homemakers:
The ladies in this category have been working for 70 hours a week or much more than that for a very long time. The working conditions have no regulations whatsoever.
Government employees:
Once upon a time there was an impression that this category does not work properly. But if you look at the past 30 years or so the positive changes that the country had seen are created by this category. The journey that India so far made in the Digital arena is created by this category of people.
Politicians:
Again, this category of people are also working hard. The changes that happened in the last 30 years in the country are spear headed by this category of people. Without the Leaders taking initiative, the country would not have seen this development.
This way, all categories of people are working hard, and in every category, there may be a certain percentage of people who do not work hard. This percentage may be more in certain categories than others. I don’t think there is any country in the world that has only hardworking people.
Quantity is not a problem. The problem is Quality of work.
Most of the Indians are working hard. Let us not worry about that smaller percentage of people who may not be working hard enough.
We have a golden opportunity to improve the Productivity of our people multi fold by using better work tools. We need to help our people to work smarter!
On the Productivity front, India is ranked 64th in the World. That is not a great ranking. India is the powerhouse of Software in the world. The usage of software in India is not very good. Many companies are struggling to use the most basic software. Among Manufacturing companies, most of the ERP implementations are a failure. The Software literacy among Manufacturing employees is low. The Managements must push very hard to get the ERPs implemented.
The same problem is there in all other industries. The fly overs that are started never get done on time in many cities in India. This problem is there in private construction industry too.
Most of the Managers in various industries do not use the tools that they would have learnt during their education. A Marketing Head would have done MBA in Marketing. But he may not use Ansoff matrix or 7Ps of marketing at work.
There are many Production managers in Manufacturing industry who do not know the basics of Lean principles.
Hospitals do not use software tools to distribute the work properly among the employees. Entrepreneurs do not learn the basic management principles and they struggle to handle the Professionals at work.
Productivity improvement
We need to take up a huge initiative to double our Productivity over a period.
We need to educate the employees in various industries about the Productivity tools for them. We need to encourage them to take targets for Productivity improvement.
Covid has put the fear of Top line loss to all businesses. Many companies have started looking at improving productivity.
Government also can put targets for Industries to encourage them to improve. Gradually the Government can link Productivity to the incentives that it may be giving to various industries.
Indian industries have to take up active role in the Industry 4.0 and improve the Productivity of the country.
Companies like Infosys, TCS, Wipro should take up the education of employees in various industries about Productivity tools and the role that Software and technology can play in improving work.
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