How to sustain productivity?

The UAE should find ways to achieve sustainable levels of productivity all year round

The scorching summer heat affects productivity in this region. Lee Hoagland / TheNational

Economists have long known that work productivity goes down as temperatures rise. This is an issue in this region, especially in the summer season when temperatures rise up to 50° Celsius. As The National reported yesterday, a survey among leading finance executives found that summer months affect business and productivity.

Part of the issue, the survey by a recruitment firm found, is annual leave and the absence of managers, as people usually take some time off during summer to travel and escape the heat.

Productivity is a hard thing to measure. In some industries, such as oil and gas or manufacturing, the output is clear. In others, such as banking, it can be harder to quantify. But productivity at least provides a starting point to discuss how the rhythm of work varies across the year.

In the UAE, we have certain periods when locals or expatriates leave en masse: the summer and around the two major Eid holidays, Christmas and New Year. It is worth asking if we might better adjust our work schedules to accommodate this annual rhythm. That might seem like a strange formulation – too often the business world assumes that workers should change to accommodate the economy. But adjusting when and how we work is an old concept: in parts of the world with regular monsoons, commercial activity is built around that fact.

There is reason, then, why we should begin thinking about how to adjust our own commercial activity. This could start small. Companies could anticipate the drop-off in staff and focus on delivering projects before it occurred. The natural drop-off could then be a time for companies to regroup or catch up on important administration before new projects begin when staff return.

Not so long ago, Gulf summers were a period of relative quiet from commercial activity, owing to the weather. Today, the weather is no bar, given that almost all offices have air-conditioning. Instead, the issue is a lack of staff. Rather than bemoan this, we should embrace it and work around it.