Christoph Schumacher: Massey University Professor of Innovation and Economics on the summer holiday period and productivity

The debate over out long summer break is heating up. 

An op-ed from businessman Toss Grimley claims New Zealand’s extended shutdown hurts productivity, a stance backed up by Auckland Business Chamber CEO Simon Bridges. 

Bridges says there’s a real perception the country “shuts down until March”, and that we’re seen more as “lifestylers” than serious businesspeople.  

Massey University Professor of Innovation and Economics, Christoph Schumacher told Heather du Plessis-Allan that while our summer break is long compared to the rest of the world, the question shouldn’t be if it’s too long, but rather if we can afford it. 

He says people do deserve breaks, but it needs to be structured a smarter way to keep productivity high.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Debate has fired up over whether our long summer break
is too long. It's been kicked off by they had
opinion piece written by the businessman Toss Gramley who reckons
taking weeks off over summer hurts our productivity and queue
everyone weighing in with their opinion, from the Prime Minister
to Simer Bridges. The Auckland boss. Christoph Schumacher is a
professor of innovation and economics at Massi University and.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Is with us on the hid Christoph, good morning, do.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
You reckon has summer breaks too long?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well? Our summer break is long compared to the rest
of the world, and New Zealand scores quite highly on
the work life balance. But I think the question is
not is it too long? The question should be can
we afford it?

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Well, I mean you wouldn't be doing it if you
couldn't afford it, would you?

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Rall to look? In the last ten years our productivity
growth rate has gone from one point two percent, which
is right the OCD average, to zero point two percent,
and we now are ranked sixty third out of sixty
seven countries. So our productivity is rather low. So the
question becomes, then can we afford this? Rather long summer

(01:04):
break and the answers.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
No, The answer is no, you're totally right, But saying
to me like, okay, So saying to the small business
owner who's running a construction business, Hey, he's worked all hard,
will year really really hard, he wants to take the
summer off, saying to him he needs to keep working
through the summer for the country's productivity. Is not going
to make him work through the summer, is it?

Speaker 2 (01:25):
No, Look, people do deserve their breaks and be all
of the states right now where we do need a
break to become to be fresh and come back to work.
In the question justice, can we structure it better? Can
we organize it better so that not everything shuts down,
but we scale things. Some people stay here to keep
business going as usual, some people take off and we

(01:45):
rotate this possibly over the years, always the possibility of
working remotely. Maybe we start using that more during the
summer break as well. I think it just needs to
be a smarter way. Nobody denies that people need a
break and deserve a break because these are hard workers.
We work long hours. We just sometimes doing structure as
well less we could very good point.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Thank you, Christopher, appreciate it. Christoph Schumacher, a professor of
Innovation and Economics of Massive University. If we're going to
do that, we're if we're going to stagger it, my
bags the summer. You can take the winter off. Are
we hard workers? I thought we had a productivity crisis.
I don't know. I only worked three hours a day.
Did you see that text before? I just come in
at six? Do do Mike's show? Go home? It's brilliant.
I mean, if you add up my contribution to the show,

(02:28):
it's about sixteen minutes. Yeah at tops tops, no wonder,
I don't have any leave. You press buttons and sometimes
you just forget as well, so it's probably only fifteen minutes.
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