JPC Unveils Toolkits to Advance Productivity

The Jamaica Productivity Centre (JPC) has unveiled three toolkits as part of efforts to further promote and facilitate productivity improvements in the country.

The toolkits, which are tailored for students, government services and businesses to assess and improve their productivity in a measurable, user-friendly way, were launched at the Terra Nova All-Suite Hotel in St. Andrew, on August 14.

In an interview with JIS News, Minister of Labour and Social Security, Hon. Pearnel Charles Jr, said the toolkits will provide guidance as well as foster a productivity mindset.

“For us to really inculcate the discipline that is required for us to be as efficient as possible as a nation, we need guidance. The toolkit is that guidance, the toolkit is providing the step-by-step for individuals, for organisations, for government to know how to arrange their operations towards the best results,” he said.

The Minister said it is envisaged that the toolkits will become a part of the culture in Jamaica.

“So, you have a mindset shift, so people don’t see it as, ‘bwoy, it’s natural for us to be late’, but rather they will see it in a few years as it’s natural for Jamaicans to be efficient, so it’s a start and I think that it’s something that we, as a country, should welcome, we should improve year by year,” he said.

“It shouldn’t be something that is static, and we want to challenge educators, departments in government, churches, football teams, the CDCs in the communities to find a way to inculcate this productivity toolkit into what you are doing and measure it. There must be some measurement and monitoring, so you can know year by year, month by month, week by week, that things are getting better; that’s the goal,” the Minister added.

Head of the Technical Assistant Services, Jamaica Productivity Centre, Jonathan Issacs, said the toolkits span the government services, businesses, and students, which are three of the most critical areas to focus on, “if we are ultimately going to shift to a culture of productivity”.

“We at the Centre believe that these toolkits will act as a framework through which the users of these toolkits are able to, in an empirical way, measure and set a baseline in terms of their performance regarding productivity,” he said.

“One of the critical elements that we have built into especially two of those toolkits, which are the business and government, is for the services that we offer as Centre, for persons to be able to access that, so in completing the toolkit, you get a score interpretation that is able to point them specifically to services that we offer,” he told JIS News.

These services include tailored productivity workshops as well as detailed productivity audits.

“For example, if you are at a bronze level, maybe we might need to do a tailored productivity workshop that will be able to build your capacity within your organisation to improve, maybe there is a need for a productivity snapshot which is a little bit deeper than what the toolkit would be able to do, and if it needs to get much more deeper than that, we are able to do a detailed productivity audit,” Mr. Isaacs said.

“We understand the mammoth task that we have on hand in terms of facilitating and improving productivity and so these toolkits were really meant to break down the barriers of access to various spheres, including government, businesses and students,” he told JIS News.

Persons may access the toolkits on the Ministry of Labour and Social Security’s website at https://mlss.gov.jm; @jamaicaproductivity on Instagram and Jamaica Productivity Centre on Facebook.

The mission of the Jamaica Productivity Centre is to provide customised, high-impact, innovative productivity solutions for sustained individual and organisational growth.