Latest / Best of Business / Christoph Schumacher: Massey University Professor of Innovation and Economics on the summer holiday period and productivity

Transcript

Christoph Schumacher: Massey University Professor of Innovation and Economics on the summer holiday period and productivity · Best of Business

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks'd be follow
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Debate has fired up over whether our long summer break
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: is too long. It's been kicked off by they had
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: opinion piece written by the businessman Toss Gramley who reckons
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: taking weeks off over summer hurts our productivity and queue
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: everyone weighing in with their opinion, from the Prime Minister
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: to Simer Bridges. The Auckland boss. Christoph Schumacher is a
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: professor of innovation and economics at Massy University and is
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: with us on this high.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: Christoph, good morning.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Do you reckon as summer breaks too long?
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: Well, our summer break is long compared to the rest
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: of the world, and New Zealand scores quite highly on
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: the work life balance. But I think the question is
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: not is it too long? The question should be can
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: we afford it?
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Well? I mean you wouldn't be doing it if you
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: couldn't afford it, would you? Oh?
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: Well, to look, in the last ten years, our proactivity
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: growth rate has gone from one point two percent, which
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: is right the OECD everage, to zero point two percent
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: and we now are ranked sixty third out of sixty
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: seven countries, so our productivity is rather low. So the
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: question becomes, then can we afford this rather long summer break?
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: And the answer the crystal no.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: The answer is no. You're totally right, But saying to
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: me like, okay, So saying to the small business owner
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: who's running a construction business, Hey, he's worked all hard,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: will year really really hard? He wants to take the
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: summer off, saying to him he needs to keep working
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: through the summer for the country's productivity. Is not going
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: to make him work through the summer, is it? No?
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, Look, people do deserve their breaks, and the all
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: of the states right now where we do need a
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: break to become to be fresh and come back to work.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: In the question justice, can we structure it better? Can
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: we organize it better so that not everything shuts down,
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: but we scale things. Some people stay here to keep
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: business going as usual, some people take off and we
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: rotate this possibly over the years, always the possibility of
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: working remotely. Maybe we start that more during the summer
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: break as well. I think it just needs to be
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: a smarter way. Nobody denies that people need a break
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: and deserve a break because Kiwis are hard workers. We
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: work long hours. We just sometimes doing structure as well
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: as we could.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: A very good point.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Christoph, appreciate it.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Christoph Schumacher, a professor of Innovation and Economics of Massive University.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: If we're going to do that, we're going. If we're
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: going to stagger it our bags the summer, you can
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: take the winter off.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Are we hard workers?
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I thought we had a productivity crisis.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: I only worked three hours a day. Did you see
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: that text before? I just come in at six? Do
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: do Mike shower home? It's brilliant.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you add up my contribution to the show,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: it's about sixteen minutes.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, at tops tops and no wonder, I don't have
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: any leave. You press buttons and sometimes you just forget
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: as well, so it's probably only fifteen minutes.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: For more from News Talks, the'd be listen live on
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: air or online and keep our shows with you wherever
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio.