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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Holidays promote productivity, says HR expert

by

Raphael John-Lall
26 days ago
20250626
FLASHBACK: Dressed as a grim reaper with a scythe, a member of the Public Services Association arrives at Charlie King Junction, Fyzabad, following the annual Labour Day march in June last year.

FLASHBACK: Dressed as a grim reaper with a scythe, a member of the Public Services Association arrives at Charlie King Junction, Fyzabad, following the annual Labour Day march in June last year.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Raphael John-Lall

Last week­end, as a re­sult of the Labour Day and Cor­pus Christi hol­i­days, T&T’s work­ers en­joyed an­oth­er four-day hol­i­day week­end for 2025.

There are 14 hol­i­days on T&T’s cal­en­dar and it rais­es the ques­tion of how do all these hol­i­days im­pact pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the econ­o­my.

Pres­i­dent of the Hu­man Re­source Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (HRMATT) Cavelle Joseph-St. Omer told the Busi­ness Guardian that hol­i­days are not nec­es­sar­i­ly bad and in fact once man­aged ef­fec­tive­ly, they can ac­tu­al­ly boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and busi­ness com­pet­i­tive­ness.

“Hol­i­days do not have to cause a pro­duc­tiv­i­ty slump. In fact, em­ploy­ers can see them as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote healthy work-life bal­ance and im­prove em­ploy­ee en­gage­ment. There is sig­nif­i­cant re­search that shows that em­ploy­ee en­gage­ment is a key is­sue when it comes to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. For ex­am­ple, did you know that dis­en­gaged em­ploy­ees have 69 per cent high­er ab­sence rates, are 18 per cent less pro­duc­tive than their en­gaged coun­ter­parts, and their work has 60 per cent more er­rors? To me, that is the heart of the is­sue, and it is not pub­lic hol­i­days,” she said.

In T&T, there are sev­en long week­ends in 2025. These in­clude: Car­ni­val Week­end (March 3-4), Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day (March 31, ob­served), the East­er Week­end (April 18-21), In­di­an Ar­rival Day (May 30-June 1), Cor­pus Christi/Labour Day (June 19-22), Eman­ci­pa­tion Day (Au­gust 1-3), and Christ­mas Day/Box­ing Day (De­cem­ber 25-28).

As a com­par­i­son, there are 10 pub­lic hol­i­days in Ja­maica, there are eight pub­lic hol­i­days at the na­tion­al lev­el in Brazil and in the Unit­ed States, the world’s largest econ­o­my, there are 11 fed­er­al hol­i­days.

The de­bate over how many hol­i­days a coun­try should have, is al­so tak­ing place in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

In May, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump took to Truth So­cial to com­plain that the Unit­ed States nev­er took any cred­it for win­ning World War I and World War II. Trump said he is rem­e­dy­ing the sit­u­a­tion by de­clar­ing two new hol­i­days: one on No­vem­ber 11, to mark the US vic­to­ry in WWI, and one on May 8, to mark the US vic­to­ry in WWII.

How­ev­er, he said that those would be work­ing hol­i­days as the US al­ready has too many hol­i­days and stirred up de­bates with some ar­gu­ing that the US has less hol­i­days than many oth­er coun­tries while oth­er Amer­i­cans sup­port­ed him.

On Thurs­day night on the Unit­ed States’ June­teenth hol­i­day, on Truth So­cial, Trump said, “Too many non-work­ing hol­i­days in Amer­i­ca. It is cost­ing bil­lions of dol­lars to keep all of these busi­ness­es closed.”

Joseph-St. Omer said while in­ter­est groups may wor­ry that more time off leads to a low­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty rate, en­cour­ag­ing a pos­i­tive cul­ture around ab­sence and leave can ac­tu­al­ly boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the long run.

“When em­ploy­ees are giv­en suf­fi­cient time off to switch off and re­lax, they come back to work feel­ing re­freshed and bet­ter equipped to tack­le their work­load. In­grain­ing reg­u­lar time off in­to the cul­ture of your or­gan­i­sa­tion will en­sure that em­ploy­ees are used to reg­u­lar­ly com­plet­ing their work in a short­er time frame in the run-up to a break, so the knock-on ef­fect around pub­lic hol­i­days will be min­imised.”

She al­so said there are mul­ti­ple strate­gies for mit­i­gat­ing neg­a­tive im­pacts that em­ploy­ers can use:

1. Em­ploy­ers can pro­mote a cul­ture that en­cour­ages em­ploy­ees to take their al­lot­ted time off and dis­con­nect from work while on hol­i­day.

2. Plan­ning and com­mu­ni­ca­tion can help man­age work­load dis­tri­b­u­tion and min­i­mize the im­pact of ab­sen­teeism.

3. Com­pa­nies can align year-end goals with hol­i­day in­cen­tives to mo­ti­vate em­ploy­ees to com­plete tasks be­fore the break.

4. En­cour­age em­ploy­ees to dis­con­nect from work dur­ing their time off to im­prove well-be­ing and re­duce burnout.

She not­ed that the cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance of hol­i­days in T&T, to­geth­er with util­is­ing some of the tools to mit­i­gate against the neg­a­tive im­pact on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els is worth bear­ing in mind when dis­cussing this is­sue.

“Many of our pub­lic hol­i­days cel­e­brate di­verse cul­tur­al and re­li­gious tra­di­tions, con­tribut­ing to na­tion­al uni­ty and iden­ti­ty. We can­not lose that as a na­tion. Pub­lic hol­i­days al­so pro­vide much-need­ed rest and re­lax­ation for cit­i­zens, which can im­prove over­all well-be­ing.”

She added that there have been on­go­ing dis­cus­sions and de­bates about the num­ber of pub­lic hol­i­days in T&T, but she be­lieves that the ben­e­fits of these hol­i­days once man­aged ef­fec­tive­ly by em­ploy­ers far out­weigh any con­cerns around pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Four-day work week

Joseph - St. Omer al­so re­ferred to the four-day work week tri­als tak­ing place glob­al­ly and fac­tored this in­to the dis­cus­sion about time off and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

“There are many four-day work week tri­als hap­pen­ing across the globe, in­clud­ing right now in the UK, which are show­ing pos­i­tive re­sults, with most em­ploy­ers tak­ing part re­port­ing a boost in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, hav­ing swapped from a five-day week. So sure­ly, the same would be true for weeks with a hol­i­day?”

She said while it may not be nec­es­sar­i­ly true, for those or­gan­i­sa­tions still op­er­at­ing on a five-day week (as in the case of T&T) a four-day or as in this re­cent three-day week due to a hol­i­day usu­al­ly means at­tempt­ing to squeeze five days’ worth of work in­to a short­er time frame. This can leave em­ploy­ees in some in­dus­tries feel­ing over­worked and over­whelmed, and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty can take a hit as em­ploy­ees strug­gle to feel mo­ti­vat­ed in the face of a grow­ing work­load.

“Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty can al­so be dis­rupt­ed by the fact that a num­ber of peo­ple use ad­di­tion­al an­nu­al leave to co­in­cide with hol­i­days. This could ei­ther mean that em­ploy­ees are less pro­duc­tive than usu­al as they look for­ward to some time off, or it could mean that their usu­al rou­tine is made more dif­fi­cult as they strug­gle to co­or­di­nate with col­leagues or clients / cus­tomers due to time off.”

Dif­fer­ent per­sec­tives

Joseph - St. Omer said whether T&T has “too many” pub­lic hol­i­days or not is sub­jec­tive and de­pends on per­spec­tive.

“A num­ber of in­ter­est groups have ar­gued for few­er hol­i­days. Opin­ions raised are; first­ly, the eco­nom­ic im­pact, with busi­ness groups and econ­o­mists con­tend­ing that too many pub­lic hol­i­days dis­rupt pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­pet­i­tive­ness. It is true that hol­i­days, par­tic­u­lar­ly those that fall dur­ing the week, can lead to a loss of work hours and eco­nom­ic out­put. T&T’s 14 pub­lic hol­i­days are more than some of its Caribbean neigh­bours and oth­er coun­tries glob­al­ly. How­ev­er, there are sev­er­al oth­er ter­ri­to­ries with sig­nif­i­cant­ly more hol­i­days than us; name­ly Nepal, Myan­mar ob­serves 32 pub­lic hol­i­days, Iran (26), Sri Lan­ka (25), and Bangladesh (22) to name a few. And the da­ta / re­search that hol­i­days neg­a­tive­ly im­pact pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is in­con­clu­sive.”

She al­so spoke about the po­ten­tial neg­a­tive as­pects of time off.

“We know for ex­am­ple, the an­tic­i­pa­tion and ac­tu­al time off can lead to de­creased fo­cus and in­creased ab­sen­teeism. While for oth­ers, like me, they al­so serve as a mo­ti­va­tor for in­creased out­put be­fore and af­ter the break, and they pro­mote em­ploy­ee well-be­ing and en­gage­ment. For those of us in HR, we see the da­ta, and it sug­gests a high­er rate of ab­sen­teeism, with em­ploy­ees more like­ly to take un­planned leave or call in sick dur­ing hol­i­day pe­ri­ods (the day be­fore or the day af­ter a long week­end). The re­duced staffing due to ab­sen­teeism can lead to a back­log of work, po­ten­tial­ly im­pact­ing project com­ple­tion and caus­ing de­lays.”

Con­verse­ly, she said there are a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of em­ploy­ees who are mo­ti­vat­ed to com­plete tasks be­fore tak­ing time off, re­sult­ing in a short-term pro­duc­tiv­i­ty boost.

“This short-term in­crease in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty as em­ploy­ees strive to com­plete tasks be­fore tak­ing time off con­tributes pos­i­tive­ly to over­all pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

“Fur­ther­more, time off al­lows em­ploy­ees to recharge, re­duc­ing stress and burnout, which can lead to in­creased fo­cus and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Stud­ies have shown that tak­ing time off can im­prove sleep, re­duce the risk of heart dis­ease, and im­prove over­all health, which can trans­late in­to bet­ter work per­for­mance. This has pos­i­tive long-term im­pli­ca­tions and re­duces med­ical claims and in­sur­ance costs in the end. In fact, em­ploy­ers can use hol­i­days as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote a pos­i­tive work-life bal­ance and im­prove em­ploy­ee en­gage­ment, which can ul­ti­mate­ly boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.”


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