Substack

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Trading Work

An organization consists of all kinds of employees. Some of them are capable, hardworking and vital to the prospects of the company; others shirk responsibility and can in many ways be a burden on the organization. Then there are of course the rest who do the work entrusted to them and no more. In Government organizations the second category is a substantial 30-50%, and are a considerable drag on its performance. The first category though small, maybe 15-25%, are a very capable lot, hardened by the experience of carrying the organization on their shoulders for long years.
My eight years in Government has convinced me that this capable first category invariably end up doing the work of their laggard colleagues.... We have a classic economic inefficiency - one group of people do most of the work, including those of their colleagues; another group delays and finally their work gets done by someone else. But both get paid the same! The workers do not get compensated for their additional work, nor do laggards get penalised for their laziness or inertia. Have we not seen enough of this earlier? "Polluting John" and "Clean Marcus", "Sairam Apartments with ample parking space" and "neighbouring Prabhu Apartments without parking facility and thereby encroaching on the road margins"...
The outcomes can be made more efficient if there exists a market for trading 'work'. The laggards can formally bargain with the workers and sell their 'work' for some market determined amount. The workers get compensated for their industriousness and the laggards get penalized for their laziness. (Obviously the trading rate per hour has to be smaller than the hourly wage rate for the laggards to agree to part with their share of the wages!)
For this market to take off, the workers have to refuse doing extra work in the absence of incentive, and the organization should stop tying the extra laggard millstones around the workers neck in the misled notion that the balance would be in the "best interests of the company".
This still leaves us with a moral dilemma - this trading arrangement would be tantamount to condoning shirking work! Not necessarily... it may even act as an incentive for some of the laggards to pull up their act. If the market determined trading rate is prohibitive, it can serve as a wake up call for them.
The outcomes from this trading arrangement - the workers get compensated, the laggards get penalised, laggards have incentive to work, quality of work is higher (the capable workers can do the work better than the laggards), and there is an economically efficient allotment of resources.
This is the best arrangement I could think of to overcome this economic inefficiency problem. Maybe there are better solutions... readers may please respond.

1 comment:

suresh72 said...

Great.All the thoughts are really worth discussing in a bigger platform.Among all the articles , i liked the one on Transfer prediction the most.We can extend the process to gambling and decide transfers and postings through gambling, making it more transperent and exciting.Every one will get a fair chance.
Inspired by you i have created a blog site for myself.
suresh