(Expansion) – Crises accelerate processes that might take a long time or would not happen if a catastrophic situation did not arise that would force society to adopt new habits immediately. Times of crisis generally involve changes that require radical adaptations and in short periods of time, in which people go through difficult times.
They are also characterized by promoting technological advances, developing knowledge and accelerating the implementation of the use of technologies and infrastructure that perhaps already existed, but were not used.
An example is the platforms for video conferencing, which allow you to replace work from an office with work from anywhere. These had existed before the pandemic began, but they were used sporadically and only in certain circumstances; it was unthinkable that this form of communication would become the norm.
Advances that emerge during critical moments can be long-lasting and ultimately improve people’s well-being. In no way should this be read as a crisis is something desirable or good news, it would be absurd to argue such a thing.
There is no doubt that deaths, job losses, lower income and welfare costs are issues that concern us all and that we would ideally want to avoid or at least reduce. The best scenario was one without a pandemic; however, the fact is that we are going through an unlikely and highly costly episode for humanity.
In the first quarter of 2021, one year after the start of the pandemic, the labor productivity index -which captures the relationship between hours worked and the level of production in the economy- showed a growth of 1.3% compared to the first quarter of 2020 – before the effects of the pandemic on the economy were observed.
In other words, with the same number of hours worked, more was produced than a year ago with those same hours. Intuitively, what is happening is that, although fewer hours are worked in the aggregate, production has fallen less than proportionally.
There are at least two reasons this could have happened during the year. The first explanation is that companies reduce their staff faster than their production in times of crisis to have liquidity, and they compensate in some way, for example, by demanding greater efficiency from employees who did not lay off. This hypothesis would indicate that the increase in labor productivity is temporary and we will eventually return to the productivity levels observed before the pandemic.
Another more encouraging possibility is that new rules and working conditions allow companies and their employees to be more productive. This could be due to the fact that people spend more time working because they do not waste time traveling, on average people concentrate more if they are not in the office, it allows better habits that cause people to be healthier, among other reasons.
Although we do not know what the exact effects of a hybrid or home office model are , for some specific sectors, it is true that those who go to the office, in particular when it comes to noisy offices and with not ideal conditions to concentrate This hypothesis It would indicate that the increase is permanent and that the new mechanisms that have been adapted may have definitively increased levels of labor productivity. At least for certain sectors, this is probably the case.
There is surely something of both hypotheses in the effect observed one year after the start of the pandemic. It is also likely that companies and workers will be able to refine their hiring schemes and business models to achieve higher levels of productivity using the tools available, which it is worth remembering, already existed before the pandemic but were not used frequently. .
The negative effects of the crisis on people’s quality of life are many and extremely costly. What remains for us is to focus on the teachings, habits and work schemes that can adapt and function in the new normal and thus improve our quality of life through higher sustainable levels of labor productivity.
Editor’s note: he is a researcher in records in detail the economic growth of the country. Follow them on, e. The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author.
