Andrew Nimick Point Concept twitter.com/andrewnim

I am sure most people have heard the noise regarding last week's comments by the head of the Northern EMA.

He has since apologised for causing upset, but in case you did not hear the comments: he suggested that women should be paid less as they took a regular day off each month due to their period.

Now according to the NBR there is research to back his comments: well they must have missed a bit there. It may well be true that menstruation means women have higher absenteeism, but that was not what his comment was – Alister Thompson maintained that they should be paid less as they were less productive.

What that actually means is that he, and one must suppose the Northern EMA, advocates that productivity is measured by how long you stand or sit at your desk at the office (I will use the office as the example).

Their logic is that productivity is measured by time spent doing a job: time = productivity

They do not seem to advocate that productivity is measured by outcomes: time/ result= productivity

Accordingly you are less productive if you take a day off in a month, regardless of whether you actually worked harder to produce more on the days you were in the office.

At the launch of Work in the Bay recently, Sir Paul Callaghan pointed out that New Zealand is one of the hardest working (in hours worked) and least productive nations. Even Greece beat us on the index and the French have got it sussed – do little produce tonnes!

It is now easy to see why this should be so.

We have a Victorian industrial view of productivity running rampant among the very people who are supposed to advise our business leaders.

In their inability to adapt and move into the 21st century they have hung on to meaningless ways of measuring.

Technology has changed the way we work, more and more people work from home, more and more the definition of the workplace is changing, along with it the times we work.

Using mobile technology it is possible for people to take care of the kids and deal with work, or postpone the work until later.

Being off sick does not mean you cannot work as many people do. Got a cold? Don't want to infect the office? ANZ will thank you in their ad.

But with technology comes ways of tracking real productivity. Sales and support use CRM to project and report sales and support results: productivity.

Ticket systems can be measured to show that tasks have been completed, how long it took. You can even measure how well staff are engaged and using the personal or work related development resources you supply with LMS systems such as Litmos.

Using the sick register is lazy and ‘Victorian' and while employers are doing it, New Zealand is going to have a hard time becoming more productive.