HR Theories and Practices to Manage Undervalued Human Capital in Sri Lanka

    Sri Lanka known as an agricultural country for centuries due to its main crops of rice paddy, tea, rubber, coconut, etc. But unfortunately, to date, these industry workers are undervalued. Among these crops, tea is still the main import industry and the foreign income generation method of Sri Lanka. The main labor force is underprivileged women who are even at the risk of discrimination, harassment, and sometimes even violence. Living and working conditions for every employee in the agriculture or tea industry are in dire situations.

Figure 1. Tea plantation workers (TWININGS — Sourced with Care, 2021)

    One of the most crucial challenges faced by the tea industry is a reformation of human resources management. Many practices in HRM are only discussed for white-collar workers but not for blue-collar workers, who are engaged in hard manual labor, typically agriculture, manufacturing, construction, mining, or maintenance. This is more evident when they have unions instead an HR department to address their issues and uplift their motivation and productivity. They are struggling against low minimum wages and for an end to their slave-like living conditions. In 2018 from August- to October, thousands of tea garden workers held a demonstration at the Galle Face Green in Colombo demanding an increase in wages from Sri Lankan rupees of LKR 500 to LKR 1000. Protesters also noted that their daily wage of rupees 500 is often held back,  and paid only after a go-ahead by the estate supervisor and other management staff. Female tea picker Kandasamy Amurdhavalli from the Thalgaswala estate of Elpitiya states that "Leopards attack us on the estates, but our wages are very poor. The estate owners never consider our fundamental rights.” These workers even don't have health insurance (Peoples dispatch, 2018).  

Recent research conducted by Gamage and Wickramaratne (Gamage et al. 2020) reported that unstructured interviews with a random sample of 75 supervisory level managers of well-established tea plantation companies reported that a range of human care and knowledge management practices contribute to enhancing worker productivity via enhanced quality of life and quality of work life.

HRM best practices to adapt

Increase productivity

    Plucker productivity depends on effective plucking time (EPT) and the speed of plucking. The actual time that pluckers spend on plucking is known as EPT.  The average yield per plucker is around 20-24 kg of green tea leaves from 8 am to 2 pm. The effective plucking time is 3.3 hours Motivation, training and development, labor and industrial relation, appraisal of the employees, safety, and health, and welfare of the employees are a few of the human resource factors relevant to the labor productivity (Ranasinghe, 2020). According to this study, she reports management factors have a strong effect on labor productivity in tea smallholding.

Incentivized properly

    Hayleys Plantations Managing Director, Roshan Rajadurai has stated that “We believe that if our employees are properly looked after, motivated and incentivized to perform, then they will generate strong returns for the company." (Ada Derana Business, 2018)

Appraisals 

    As we all know performance appraisals are essential for the growth of a company and the employee, the workers in the tea industry are also should be given some performance evaluations to motivate them. One such example is the Sri Lanka Tea Board’s All Estate Competition for the Best Tea Pluckers hosted by the Sri Lanka tea board. After 3 of their employees won the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prices of the competition, Hayleys Chairman and Chief Executive, Mohan Pandithage stated that “The resolve that they showed in winning this competition sets an inspiring example for all of us and we wanted to do our best to celebrate their work and their dedication while spending time with them to understand the challenges they continue to face and what we at Hayleys can do to support them to achieve their ambitions,”(Ada Derana Business, 2018)

Conclusion

    A model was proposed by Gamage et al (Wickramaratne, 2021) as a sustainable human resource management model for the tea industry that stresses that best human care and knowledge management practices act as sustainable HR practices in the tea industry and these factors determine the productivity of tea estate workers. So HR professionals have to pay more attention to these undervalued employee sectors to get the best out of them.

Reference 

1. R. Twining and Co. Ltd, (2021) Progress report 2021. Available at: https://www.sourcedwithcare.com/media/1650/twinings_sourced-with-care_progress-report-2021.pdf Accessed online [3/20/2022]
   
   
2. Peoples Dispatch, (2018), Tea Garden workers in Sri Lanka are demanding a wage hike. https://peoplesdispatch.org/2018/11/12/tea-garden-workers-in-sri-lanka-are-demanding-a-wage-hike/ Accessed online [3/20/2022]
   
   
3. Gamage, A.T. and Wickramaratne, W.P.R., 2020. Do Human Care and Knowledge Management Practices Really Matter in Determining Worker Productivity? Perceptions of Supervisory Level Employees in Tea Plantation Sector in Sri Lanka. Kelaniya Journal of Human Resource Management, 15(1), pp.16–36. DOI: http://doi.org/10.4038/kjhrm.v15i1.71 
   
   
4. Hayleys tea harvesters win 1st, 2nd and 3rd place at national tea plucking competition(2018), Ada derana business Available at: http://bizenglish.adaderana.lk/hayleys-tea-harvesters-win-1st-2nd-and-3rd-place-at-national-tea-plucking-competition/ accessed online [3/20/2022]
   
   
5. RANASINGHE, H. K. G. S. 2020. The Impact of Management Factors on Labor Productivity in the Tea Small Holding in Sri Lanka. International Journal of Multidisciplinary and Current Educational Research (IJMCER), 2, 227-245.
   
   
6. WICKRAMARATNE, A. G. W. P. R. 2021. Quality of Life and Quality of Work Life as Determinants of Employee Productivity: Self-reports of Tea Harvesters in Sri Lanka. Emerging Markerts JOurnal, 11, 51-58.