What Makes Hairdressers in Berlin More Efficient Than Hairdressers in Zagreb?

Croatia is once again not among the most productive countries in the world. It is not a great surprise, just as it is not surprising that we are not even close to the top of the list, even when looking only at the European Union. The Croatian worker, it is a commonly held belief, is simply unproductive compared to workers in other countries, and there seems to be no remedy for that.

If we consider the most expert definitions, which state that productivity is actually the difference between hours worked and the value of the product, or the delivered goods and services, which is simply lower in our case than in other countries, we can somewhat penetrate the reasons for our unproductivity compared to others. And they are not based, as some like to suggest, on the fact that we are lazy and slacking off.

What makes, for example, a hairdresser in Zagreb who works an eight-hour shift and dedicates half an hour to each customer less productive than a hairdresser in Berlin who also works eight-hour shifts and also dedicates half an hour to each customer on average? Is the reason laziness or something else? Something more tangible? Perhaps more whispering? A hairdresser in Zagreb will charge a maximum of 100 kuna for an average male haircut, while a hairdresser in Berlin charges between 30 and 50 euros, so it is not surprising that he creates greater value for his service in his working day compared to the one in Croatia. And that is why he is obviously more productive.

Dull Croatian Scissors

When he goes to Germany, the Croatian worker is not less productive than the German, quite the opposite. Abroad, Croatian workers are spoken of in superlatives, and this tells us, emphasizes Boris Feis, the secretary of the Independent Trade Unions of Croatia (SSSH), that the explanation for the difference in productivity should be sought more in the prices of services and goods, in the organization of work and available technologies, and less in the workers themselves.

– According to existing OECD estimates, the productivity of the Croatian economy is at about half the level of productivity in Germany. Our industry is at about 75 percent of German productivity, and agriculture is only at about 33 percent – Feis pointed out and added that productivity is most influenced by the technology applied at each workplace, the way work is organized, the qualifications and education of the total number of employees, and the financial valuation, or market value of the produced goods or services.

And that probably means that the scissors of Croatian hairdressers are duller than those of the Germans, that their organization of hair salon work is better than ours, and that the market value of haircut services in Croatia is lower than in Germany. Which it is, and there lies all the fame about unproductive Croatian workers!

Three ‘izations’

How to encourage productivity in such circumstances is not a big secret at all. If you ask Klemen Šešok, one of the owners and directors of the Slovenian industrial group Iskra, the holy grail of productivity is digitalization, automation, and stimulation. When these three factors come together, productivity grows year after year at double-digit rates, this is the recipe of the Šešok family, at least when it comes to Iskra. It has been tried and perfected in Slovenia, definitely works at the Iskra shipyard in Šibenik, which has been in its ownership for three years, and is slowly becoming a reality at the Zagreb Elka, which it took over last year.

It will be difficult, almost impossible, to demystify the fame that we are unproductive, lazy, that at work we more often check Tinder than we follow the outcomes of our business successes. However, that does not mean we must give up on that mission. Perhaps one day the situation will turn around, and someone will then need to say: I told you so? Let it be Lider this time. And how we demystified this topic in its entirety can be read in the digital or printed edition.