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Productivity is simply measured by the ratio of outputs over inputs, and the level of productivity is a fundamental determinant of performance. This translates to the everyday standard of living based on the country’s nationwide performance, or the quality of public goods and services delivered grounded on the government’s productive use of tax collected. Recognizing the significance of productivity, in 1961, the Philippines joined seven other Asian countries in establishing the Asian Productivity Organization which aims to contribute to the sustainable socioeconomic development of Asia and the Pacific through enhancing productivity. Since then various productivity programs were introduced, an annual observation of National Quality and Productivity Month in October was celebrated, and Executive Order No. 395 Approving and Adopting the National Action Agenda for Productivity (NAAP) and Creating the Philippine Council for Productivity was signed in 1997. This was continued by the Medium-Term National Action Agenda for Productivity (MTNAAP) in the early 2000s with the Philippine Quality Award (PQA) institutionalized by Republic Act No. 9013. While the concepts of productivity were introduced in the Philippines in the 1970s, its Total Factor Productivity (TFP) ran an overall negative growth from the period of 1970 to 1990 and only became positive for the period of 1990 to 2013 with an average growth of 1.1%. While the productivity outlook of the Philippines is incrementally increasing, it is still lagging behind its neighboring countries. Several productivity challenges deter the country’s growth, and these are categorized as systems, technology, workforce, equipment, and governance. Complicated structures and burdensome regulations require systems reengineering and process improvement. Aligning to international standards and maximizing cross-functional coordination responds to a more customer-centric process and result to a more efficient and more seamless transaction. The anemic use of productivity enhancing technologies also hinders the opportunities of the digital age to harmonize service delivery and innovate for value creation. This era of change demands modernizing job competencies and increased measurement of productivity performance coupled with the development of knowledge productivity and innovative capacity. The surge of technologies and equipment also strain the necessity for an escalated productivity and quality consciousness and a new form of leadership and policies. As the productivity movement in the Philippines began in 1960s with its official declaration of commitment to productivity improvement, it has then created institutions, built partnerships, introduced program initiatives and developed frameworks and policies in the pursuit for increased national productivity. Up to this day, productivity is treated as priority indicating a Subsector Target Outcome of “Seamless Service Delivery Achieved” under Chapter 5 of the Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022 with the following strategies: (1) adopt a whole-of-government approach in delivery of key services; (2) implement regulator reforms; and (3) improve productivity of the public sector. Together with various national agencies and high impact productivity and innovation programs, the Philippine government aims to be responsive to the needs of its people by efficiently and effectively delivering public goods and services. Good public service results in citizen satisfaction and public trust and confidence thereby ultimately improving competitiveness and nationwide performance.

A productivity specialist always strives to achieve high productivity and quality. To be able to do this, he/she must have the knowledge and competencies in different productivity and quality (P&Q) tools which will help in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization. P&Q tools are grouped into two major groups – basic and advanced. Basic tools help an organization to identify procedures, ideas, cause and effect, and other issues relevant in improving its performance, while advanced tools involves more complex processes such as measurement techniques, statistical data analysis, lean concepts, and the business excellence frameworks.

Basic

1. 5S – A systematized approach to organize work areas, keep rules and standards, and maintain discipline. It utilizes workplace organization and work simplification techniques.

• • Seiri (Sort) – Take out unnecessary items and dispose
  • Seiton (Sytematize) – Arrange necessary items in good order
  • Seiso (Sweep) – Clean your workplace
  • Seiketsu (Sanitize) – Maintain high standard of housekeeping
  • Shitsuke (Self-discipline) – Do things without being told or ordered

5. Quality Circle– involves a small group of employees from the same workplace organized to identify problems and suggest solutions to work-related issues. A quality circle, also known as Work Improvement Team, Synergy Team, and Support Team, has seven basic features: voluntary in nature; small in size; homogenous in membership; projects within control; systematic and scientific in approach, continuing in activity and universal in application.
6. Suggestion Scheme – A systematic approach to solicit innovative ideas for improvement. It promotes two-way communication between management and employees wherein good ideas are recognized and rewarded to encourage active participation. However, grievance, bargaining and policy issues are not part of the themes for suggestions.
7. Practical IE – offers simple but systematic techniques to analyze operations, processes and integrated systems with a view to improving efficiency, effectiveness and economy, and makes inefficiencies visible. Among the practical IE techniques are:
   • Method study – systematic examination of doing work in order to develop and apply easier and more effective methods and reduce costs
   • Work measurement – used to obtain time data for method study and establish standard time to perform tasks
8. Quality Management – An approach to ensure that the desired quality of a good or service is delivered. It covers quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement. ISO 9000 standards provide guidelines on how to establish QM systems.
9. Inventory Management – Approach to oversee and control the ordering, storage and use of supplies, materials, components and other items that the organization will use for the production of goods and services.
10. Energy Conservation – Reducing energy consumption through using less of an energy service.
11. Value Analysis/Value Engineering – An approach to improve the value of an item or process by first understanding the functions of the item and their value, then by identifying its constituent components and their associated costs. It then seeks to find improvements to the components by either reducing their cost or increasing the value of their functions.
12. Productive Maintenance – A maintenance management approach that looks at maintenance as a productive function, and considers that it should be the concern of every unit in the organization. It aims to eliminate big losses on equipment effectiveness e.g. setup time, breakdown, speed losses, waiting time, etc. All levels in the organization must cooperate in ensuring the productive functioning of equipment and physical facilities.
13. Knowledge Management – An integrated approach of creating, sharing, and applying knowledge to enhance productivity, profitability and growth.
14. Ergonomics – Making better use of human capacities (economize motions) and protect workers from hazards and other poor work conditions that negatively affect worker’s occupation health and productivity. Principles: – Safety – Comfort – Ease of use – Productivity – Aesthetics
15. Green Procurement- Purchasing products and services that cause minimal adverse environmental impacts. It incorporates human health and environmental concerns into the search for high quality products and services at competitive prices.

Advanced

13. ICT/ Digital Era Government/ E-Government – Involves the use of computer technology and conversion of manual records into computer files to automate data and transaction processing thus minimizing or removing manual work and intervention that is susceptible to corruption
14. Shared Services – A strategy to “move out” major support processes out of individual units by “concentrating them” in order to improve cost efficiencies, service levels, and responsiveness.
15. Re-engineering –Strategic review, analysis, and redesign of structure, workflows, and processes to achieve higher efficiency, effectiveness and economy.
16. Total Quality Management and Business Excellence – A managerial approach centered on quality based on participation of all members and aimed at continually improving performance over the long term by focusing on customers while addressing the needs of all stakeholders.
17. Lean Management – A management philosophy that seeks to maximize value to customers, both internal and external while simultaneously removing wasteful activities and practices.
18. Operations Research – Employing scientific and mathematical techniques to determine optimal or near-optimal solutions to complex decision making:

• • Mathematical optimization
  • Queuing studies
  • Simulation
  • Econometric analysis
  • Data envelopmental analysis

Public sector organization faces a lot of challenges such as meeting the citizen’s expectations, managing workforce transition, reducing risks in implementing new technologies, and financial limitations. Lean management, one of the major buzzwords within management today, addresses these challenges. Lean in English lexicon denotes thin and well-trimmed. Thus, an organization that is aiming to be lean cuts away its excesses in all aspects of work wherein repeated processes take place. To be lean, an organization may need to cut down the number of its employees, although this should not always be the case. The organization, through lean management, has to listen more to its stakeholders and in the case of the public sector – to the citizens. Lean Management is a system that refers to a collection of principles and methods that is focused on the identification and elimination of waste in any process. Its origins can be traced in industrial production and now the concept of Lean has swept across the private and public sectors. Lean has five basic principles – identifying customer value, creating value streams, creating flow without stops, introducing new guiding principles and practicing Kaizen every day. Lean also practices eliminating waste or “muda” in Japanese. These eight wastes are:

1. Inventory (backlog of work, excess materials and information, obsolete databases and folders)
2. Defects (data errors, missing information, typos, confusing requirements)
3. Overproduction (unnecessary reports and copies, excess email messages)
4. Complexity (too many steps in a process, too many signature levels, unclear job descriptions)
5. Waiting (long time to wait for approvals or decisions, waiting for information)
6. Excess Motion (travels to meetings, trips to printer and copier)
7. Moving Items (transport of documents, document storage)
8. Environmental Resources (excess use of energy, paper, and water)

To implement Lean, an organization must first analyze the steps of a process and determine which steps add value and which do not. Next, it needs to calculate the cost associated in removing steps that have no value-added and comparing its cost versus the expected benefits. It also has to determine the resources required to support the value-added steps while eliminating those without added value. However, many organizations encounter these typical pitfalls which lead to failure of implementing Lean.

1. Management loses focus on Lean – There are times when management, despite good results, lose their focus and later on, backslide in implementing lean. What must be understood is that Lean is not a band-aid solution and should be implemented in a long term.
2. Lean is treated as a project – As mentioned above, for Lean to be effective, it must involve the whole organization and its future. It should not have a start and end date. It should be inculcated all aspects of operations as well.
3. Lean does not involve all employees- Lean must be sufficiently anchored to all the employees. The implementation should also consider the ideas of the employees and not just of the management.
4. Insufficient internal anchoring of Lean knowledge and competencies – In starting Lean, an organization may seek the help of external consultants on Lean management to train its employees and to later on, build its own competencies to be able to continue working with Lean.
5. Insufficient performance management – Performance management is one of the core aspects of Lean. An organization must ensure that there is continuous improvement by measuring results in a regular basis.
6. Lack of management power – As with other productivity and quality tools, management’s commitment is critical. The management must be able to motivate and engage its employees to practice Lean.

It is normal for an organization to encounter one or more of these pitfalls. However, it should not discourage it from continuing with Lean. Lean entails a simple mindset, and not too shocking changes, and delivers results in a few months.

Workplace ergonomics is often associated with placing and design of equipment and furniture in a workplace, however it is much more than that. Ergonomics involves everything that involves people. It is making better use of human capacities (economize motions) and protect workers from hazards and other poor work conditions that negatively affect worker’s occupation health and productivity. The concept of ergonomics has a major role to play in providing a comfortable working environment to promote productivity and efficiency. According to the Asian Productivity Organization, comfort and productivity are interrelated. Employees who worked in a noisy environment and congested areas are more likely to feel dissatisfied and unmotivated to do their tasks. Other common ergonomics issues include wrong heights for table and chair, no back support, no elbow support, banging the knees in keyboard tray, and cradling the phone while using the computer. An office should be designed based on the specific nature of the jobs and the employees working there. Flexibility, comfort, communication, lighting, temperature, air quality and spatial arrangements should be considered to further improve productivity in the workplace. Benefits of Ergonomics

1. Ergonomics reduces costs – Sprains and strains results to lost productivity, and at the same time, this costs money for an organization in the form of compensation benefits. Implementing ergonomics in the workplace reduces ergonomic risk factors such as musculoskeletal disorders.
2. Ergonomics improve productivity – Working in an awkward posture is not an efficient way to get things done. An efficient workstation encourages good posture, less exertion and fewer motions, and better heights and reaches.

   

3. Ergonomics contributes to higher working capacity – Poorly designed workstations are frustrating and may cause employees to feel tired and strained. With ergonomics, employees are not distracted by discomfort and are likely to feel inspired, solve more problems, and think of new ideas.
4. Ergonomics make the employees feel more engaged – An organization that provides an ergonomic workplace takes the health and wellbeing of their employees seriously. A comfortable workspace can reduce turnovers, decrease absenteeism, and increase employee involvement.

Organizations feel that implementing ergonomics is a luxury but it is not. The initial cost may be higher but compared to conventional and traditional workspaces, ergonomics offers more benefits not only for the employees but for the organization as well. For an organization that is limited financially, an option of procuring second-hand ergonomic equipment and furniture may be explored.