Productivity down as workforce shrinks, UWI warns

Productivity in Barbados has slumped, driven by a shrinking workforce as more people retired than were hired, the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill said Tuesday as it joined the Human Resource Management Association of Barbados (HRMAB) to tackle workplace challenges.

The labour force shrank by about 2 700 people in the first half of the year, while annual productivity growth has averaged only 0.8 per cent since 2018, putting the country at risk of a long-term ceiling on economic expansion, UWI Cave Hill Deputy Principal Professor Winston Moore warned.

The economy depends heavily on services, which employ 86 per cent of working Barbadians.

This figure makes human resources central to Barbados’ competitiveness, said Professor Moore as the UWI and HRMAB signed a partnership agreement at the Jacqueline Wade Conference Room.

“Our competitiveness is therefore a human resource question in the most literal sense, and the people in this room are the ones who manage it,” he stressed.

“Since 2018, labour productivity in Barbados has grown by an average of 0.8 per cent per year. Over the same period our economy has expanded for more than twenty consecutive quarters, unemployment has fallen to about six per cent, and the labour force has begun to shrink. In the first half of this year the labour force contracted by some 2 700 persons, largely because more people retired than entered.”

The combination of slow productivity growth and a shrinking labour force could leave Barbados close to what he described as a “long-run speed limit”, he added.

“Growth in output comes from two sources: more workers, or more output per worker. We are running out of the first. If productivity continues to grow at 0.8 per cent while the labour force contracts, then 0.8 per cent is close to our long-run speed limit, whatever we write in a development plan.”

The professor argued that productivity was not only about technology, investment or economics, but also about how organisations managed people.

“Most of what economists call the productivity residual is, on closer inspection, management. It is how work is organised, how people are selected, how quickly a new hire becomes competent, whether a supervisor knows how to have a difficult conversation, whether a good employee sees a reason to stay.”

Professor Moore said this development put HR professionals in an important position to help address productivity challenges, particularly through management practices that affected employee engagement and productivity.

He also highlighted UWI Cave Hill’s role in preparing the future workforce: “Cave Hill is the largest single supplier of qualified entrants to the Barbadian labour market. Last October we presented 1 274 graduates, 914 at the undergraduate level and 360 at the postgraduate level. We teach across seven faculties and more than 350 programmes, to a student body of roughly 6 600. Every decision we take about a course outline, a competency, an assessment method or a work placement becomes part of the national skills stock three or four years later.”

He continued: “There is no other institution in this country whose curriculum choices show up so directly in the productivity statistics, and none that carries a heavier obligation to get those choices right.”

Professor Moore said HRMAB provided UWI with insight into the demand side of the labour market and the skills employers needed.

“The vacancies that stay open too long, the competencies new graduates lack, the skills that are appearing faster than any curriculum committee can move. What we bring in return is not only teaching capacity but research capacity, the ability to measure whether an intervention worked rather than whether it felt right.”

The UWI-HRMAB memorandum of understanding would allow the university to better align its programmes with employers’ changing needs.

“This agreement gives HRMAB a structured voice in how we develop and review the programmes that produce human resource professionals, and more broadly in how we prepare graduates for the workplaces its members run. It gives our students access to placements, mentorship and the professional standards of the association.”

For HRMAB, Professor Moore said, the agreement would provide access to continuing professional development, UWI faculty and facilities, and create opportunities for joint research.

The two organisations could also collaborate on research examining productivity across different sectors, rather than relying on assertion and anecdote, he said.

Professor Moore also proposed the “first joint activity under this agreement to be an annual review of skills demand, conducted with HRMAB, that tells the campus what the labour market needs and tells the country whether we are supplying it. If we do that well, it will be worth more than the signature we are about to witness”.

HRMAB president Tisha Peters underscored the importance of a university degree but stressed that students also needed opportunities to apply what they had learned.

She described the transition from university to employment as a shared responsibility between academia, professional associations and employers.

Citing the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, Peters said: “We can expect the creation of new jobs equivalent to 14 per cent of today’s total employment, amounting to 170 million jobs. However, this growth is expected to be offset by the displacement of the equivalent of eight per cent or 92 million of current jobs, resulting in net growth of seven per cent of total employment, or 78 million jobs. Employers expect approximately 39 per cent of workers’ existing skills to be transformed or become outdated by 2030.”

She explained that this did not mean opportunities were disappearing, but that they were changing.

“Academia therefore has a critical role in preparing students for changing jobs and, in some cases, roles that do not yet exist. Some graduates may build careers in artificial intelligence, data analytics, cybersecurity, renewable energy or digital transformation. 

“Others will enter familiar professions such as HR, finance, education and healthcare—but will practise them in very different ways. The future of work is not only about new jobs; it is also about new ways of doing existing jobs.”

Peters discouraged the assumption that technology would replace people, stressing that people who did not learn how to work with technology could be at a disadvantage.

“Universities must continue to combine academic rigour with digital literacy, interdisciplinary learning and practical exposure. This means helping students use emerging technologies critically, ethically and responsibly. The goal is not to replace sound academic thinking with technology, but to use technology to extend it.”

(LG)