Adapt
and Be Ready to Thrive
April
3, 2020
The
Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association (JMEA) focused on the subject
of productivity for its Friday April 3 edition of the IG Live feature “The
Productive Sector Speaks”.
The
message from featured speaker, Jamaica Productivity Centre (JPC), Chief
Technical Director (Acting) Tamar Nelson, was that this was a time for leaders
who will demonstrate how the businesses can adapt and be ready to thrive beyond
the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Nelson
said that the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean (ECLAC) has estimated that as a region, GDP will contract by -1.8%.
Nelson said that the JPC 2018 summary report said that Jamaica experienced 1.9%
growth, noting that should the ECLAC forecast be realized, Jamaica can expect
that will negatively affect productivity in 2020.
In
February, 2020 The Planning Institute of Jamaica reported on GDP performance of
2019 compared to 2018. The PIOJ noted that the manufacturing sector had grown
by 1.8% over 2018, due to improvements at Petrojam; Agriculture grew by 0.4%
over 2018. In the services sector, each of the eight broad categories of
services had experienced growth over the previous calendar year.
The
Report on the Jamaica Survey of Establishments 2018 published by the PIOJ and
authored by STATIN show that 91% of establishments in Jamaica have a market
orientation and therefore will need to attract and maintain clients and
customers.
Nelson said, “Work as we know it is not going to be the same after this and we track what they are doing and the effect that it has on business productivity and what they can do going forward post COVID.”
Using
alliteration, Nelson put forward seven points that companies should be using at
this time to stay productive.
1. Strategy
– create a team that uses a participatory approach to focused on what is
happening and to ensure that the communication around it is transparent so that
it can be accepted as factual and understandable;
2. Systems
– Simple and effective to minimize threats, including waste; do not build
processes around exceptions to the normal operations;
3. Structure
adaptations to the current environment should be documented;
4. Sanitisation
to protect the people in the environment in which they work;
5. Synergies
within communities should be strengthened for mutual support;
6. Services
should be available to customers at an acceptable quality, persons will
remember how they are treated during this time;
7. Support
through leadership and management should be ready to enable, engage and
energise communities to have a positive attitude and keep moving forward.
Highlighting
the importance of innovation at this time, Nelson said, “This is the time to
listen to the crazies, the ones with the way out ideas, what have you got to
lose?”
Areas where the news media has reported local innovations and synergies during the past month of actions taken to militate against COVID-19 are:
- Acceleration of use of final
year students in health disciplines to be put on care duties;
- Arrangements with Cuba for
deployment of 140 specialist health care workers to Jamaica;
- Inclusion of Andrews Memorial
Hospital for for referrals from the Kingston Public Hospital;
- Car pooling at private
enterprises to help staff who have to take public transportation;
- Youth scientist Rayvon
Stewart’s innovation XERMOSOL, an ultraviolent light technology which has
been named by Commonwealth Secretary General Baroness Patricia Scotland as
a possible key weapon in the fight to contain the spread of the novel
coronavirus (COVID-19);
- Innovators from Pree Labs
Yeniki Wallen-Bryan and Bluedot Larren Peart create prototype
ventilator and medical face masks;
- Delivery of education from K-13
through collaborations between the Ministry of Education, Youth and
Information and private companies Flow, RJR Gleaner Group, Edu Focal and
One-On-One Educational Services Ltd.
Jamaica’s
System of National Accounts (SNA) defines production as “The process whereby
labour, materials, accumulated capital assets and technical knowledge (factors
of production) are applied to the task of making valuable goods and services.”
The system has a boundary that does not include services used and consumed by
the same establishment during an accounting period; unpaid domestic and
industrial work; and also illegal activities that are not captured by
accounting systems.
The
Jamaica Productivity Centre is a department of the Ministry of Labour and
Social Security.
END
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