KUALA LUMPUR, May 25 — Both the government and private sectors should prioritise output and productivity levels instead of the number of hours an employee puts in at work, Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said.

The minister cited as an example the tea break culture in the civil service to argue his point, saying it was pointless for an employee to clock in early at work only to spend the better part of the morning chatting over tea.

“In the government sector, you show up to work at 8am, 8.30am because that’s the government rule. Sharp 8.30, you clock in,” he said in his luncheon speech at the 2nd Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi Human Capital Summit here.

“But by 9.30am or ten o’clock, you know what happens. On break lah, teh tarik and so on.

“To me, it’s not so important that you clock in at 8.30. It’s more important what your productivity is like [sic]. It’s more important that you’ve done your work,” he added.

He stressed on the need for the employers of today to embrace the work lifestyles of the youth in order to maximise the potential of their workforce.

“The time for moral imposition has passed, and if we truly appreciate the process of generational baton passing, we have to accept, embrace and facilitate this towards mutual goals,” he said.

“The many trends, if we facilitate correctly, will produce a more knowledgeable human capital—the most important factor in this knowledge economy.”

He said that work priority has shifted over the past few decades from a focus on quantity production following a change from agriculture and industry-based to the quality of ideas needed to fuel today’s knowledge-based economy.

Changing the work culture to embrace the youth, he said, is part of a four-key agenda which he believes should lead the country’s strategy of human capital development in the next five years.

The other three keys are inclusivity, producing a scientific and rational society through strategic infrastructure investment, and finding the nation’s place in the digital age.

The Second Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi Human Capital Summit is organised by the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute.

The theme this year is “Enhancing Human Capital for a Competitive Economy”.