Game in the Brain

Ok again I’m apply my anecdotal observations regarding performance and what it means in the bigger scheme of things. 

What has recently siezed my attention is the difference in productivity in a poor country and a developed country. On Paper its 80% at the most, most of the time its less at about 60%. Consider that a company that outsources pays less than 1/4 the true cost of employment for about 3/5 to 4/5th the productivity (still a huge financial incentive, because to make the equivalent of 1:1 (Developed Market to Emerging Market) performance, your paying a cost of 31% to 41% for a full equivalent. Think this also applies in other poor countries not just the Philippines.

So where does this lack of productivity comes from? 
Lets get all that cultural propaganda and insecurity baggage out of the window. Lets look at that given certain assumptions and hours of quality training no matter what culture we can create a highly productive worker. What of those background assumptions are we not take a good look at so that we can be just as good as everyone else? 


A Definition of Terms: 
I want to get Work Discipline out of the way. I believe it is a result of practice, priorities and stability. Discipline is a final product, it is not something everyone in the Philippine gets as they leave to become productive units in society. So before people start arguing Discipline, lets look at developmental factors (or growing up factors). 


Some Clues: The biggest source of Loss of Productivity
The biggest productivity killer is Attrition through attendance and AWOL. 


assumption: Financial Independence.
Being a poor country and people, many people and the Philippines are reliant in the basic financial unit of the family. There are a lot of obligations, give and take and conflict in this. In fact being poor means not having the financial freedom to get out of a bad situation. The poorer the family, the more obligations and more work in supporting broader and broader circles of relations. 


Problems with the Forced Family Unit. 
Freeloaders, is an inherent problem in any socialized system. You cannot just cast out freeloaders in the Philippines. What is forced about family unit is that there really is not much choice in the matter. When the social repercussions are severe and self-destructive, then there is no real option.


Reproductive Freedom. 
Family size is a big factor in Financial independence and stability. Among the educated working class of the Philippines this is the obvious and very practical case, there is a growing majority to this awareness and it doesn’t help when there is an active mis-information campaign moving against this. A greater control over reproductive freedom, helps people making better financial and long term decisions for themselves… unless there is a group that thinks everyone is incapable of making such decisions and wants to make the decision for them, and would rather spread misinformation than allow anyone to make a informed decision. 


Formal Training and Certification.
The cost for international training is for a developed market person. The Return on Investment is quicker for someone whose income is x10 more, and its easier for such a person to save up for such. Consider in an Developed Market person, they can credit his leaves and training costs to their company. This is not true in poorer countries. A country who invests in Formal Training can expect his people to be pirated, not only did they spend the huge amount for training and certification (also not the work hours sacrificed). If you get all those costs and apply it in amortization on salary PLUS the pay increase, someone can else can just sweep down and offer a higher pay increase. Any risk of possible loss of the employee is a problem for the company. 


There were several software companies who tried seeing if they can take advantage of the economies of scale. One of them, i was able to talk to the project leader and he was happy to discuss with me the post-mortem which is what is just discussed. Ideally the level of formal training and certification is at every 6 months, which that adds up and is very expensive, what ever cost is going to be has to be justifiable. Only multinationals can afford this, a local company has to be able to make enough to not only train enough people at this level, but to have enough people in case anything happens to that one (like being pirated).  


I have some of my own solutions in the backburner, drawing from behavioral economics but thats about it. 


assumption: Poor transportation infrastructure.
China’s Factories provide housing, its an interesting thing to consider when looking at what has been identified as a productivity factor. We can’t expect businesses in the philippines to house their employees and their families to make them more productive, this is a sphere of common good and where governments are supposed to help out in. 


Corruption (really its just corruption), affects transportation infrastructure in the Philippines. If I go any further I will take up a whole other topic. Just understand that the techniques and methods of making it highly profitable, efficient and with an easy transition methodology is there Corrupt officials are fighting over the right who gets to own these. 


assumption: Healthcare.
This is a problem in developed countries as well as poor countries. Its just poor countries are more overcrowded that attrition becomes of this is something they’ve learned to live with. Note that a large factor of this is Pollution and infrastructure. Flooding causes sickness as much as the toxic atmosphere of metro manila has increased pulmonary sickness incidence. 


This is a personal problem for me, as someone who can have a high and debilitating fever and respiratory ailments about +5x a year (I take my leaves on the weekend and work from home).


Overcoming this without waiting for things to improve. 
Thankfully technology has reached a level that we can have a work-around, or what I would rather call a hack for brevity. There are various hacks to make sure people can work at home, take care of family obligations, take advantage of more optimized health care system, be more productive and cover for each other. There are hacks for all of that, and as a BPO with telecom-hacks there are a lot of opportunities for us to improve.