What if we have been looking at the 24-Hour Economy the wrong way?

What if we have misunderstood the 24-Hour Economy from the very beginning?

What if the real question is not whether businesses should remain open for 24 hours?

What if Ghana’s greatest employment challenge is not simply a shortage of jobs, but a shortage of access to work?

And what if we are trying to build tomorrow’s economy with a labour system designed for yesterday?

These questions are uncomfortable because they challenge what many of us have accepted as normal. Yet they may hold the key to whether Ghana’s 24-Hour Economy becomes a genuine economic transformation or simply another well-intentioned policy.

Today, almost every discussion about the 24-Hour Economy starts with the same expectation: businesses must work longer hours.

That seems logical.

But businesses do not stay open because government asks them to.

They stay open because it makes business sense.

If extending operations by extra four hours means another recruitment exercise, another permanent employment commitment and higher fixed payroll costs, many businesses will choose to close at the usual time.

Perhaps, then, we have been asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking how businesses can work longer, perhaps we should be asking how we can make it easier for businesses to work longer.

That is the difference between extending working hours and building a 24-Hour Economy.

One focuses on time.

The other focuses on removing barriers to productivity.

It is this thinking that inspired what I call the National Productive Hours Framework (NPHF), a conceptual labour reform designed to strengthen the implementation of Ghana’s 24-Hour Economy.

Its central idea is remarkably simple.

Every employer recruits people.

But what every employer is really buying is productive time.

Yet our labour market continues to organise work around permanent positions instead of productive demand.

Consider something as ordinary as a supermarket.

Its real need is not necessarily three full time cashiers.

Its real need may simply be 240 productive cashier hours every week.

Under the National Productive Hours Framework, recruitment standards do not change. Applicants are still interviewed, vetted and trained.

What changes is what happens after they qualify.

Instead of repeating the same recruitment process whenever business demand increases, the employer builds an approved labour directory of qualified workers. Whenever additional labour is required, productive hours are first offered to people who have already demonstrated they can do the job.

The business responds faster.

Workers gain quicker access to income.

Customers receive better service.

Everybody wins.

At first glance, this may sound like a small administrative adjustment.

It is not.

It challenges the way we have understood employment for decades.

Every year, thousands of young Ghanaians graduate with the knowledge and skills to contribute to the economy. They prepare CVs, submit applications and move from one interview to another, often competing repeatedly for the same vacancies.

One position may attract hundreds of applicants.

The vast majority leave disappointed.

Not because they are incapable.

But because only one or two positions are available.

The National Productive Hours Framework proposes a different approach.

Instead of asking young people to compete every time an opportunity appears, it asks them to compete once, to demonstrate that they possess the competence, character and professionalism an employer requires.

Once they qualify, they become part of that employer’s approved labour directory.

From that moment, they are no longer waiting endlessly for opportunity.

They become opportunity ready.

Whenever additional productive hours become available, they are among the first people considered.

Employment therefore changes from waiting for vacancies to maintaining continuous access to productive work.

For thousands of graduates, that is more than a change in recruitment.

It is a change in hope.

A young graduate who today may spend years searching for one permanent appointment could instead begin earning, building experience and developing a professional reputation almost immediately after qualifying.

The framework therefore asks young people to compete once for competence, not repeatedly for opportunity.

That is not simply a new recruitment model.

It is a new way of thinking about work.

This new way of thinking about work also provides what I believe has been missing from the conversation on Ghana’s 24-Hour Economy.

Today, many businesses already have customers beyond traditional working hours.

Supermarkets receive late evening shoppers.

Warehouses process urgent orders.

Manufacturers experience seasonal increases in demand.

Logistics companies move goods throughout the night.

The demand often exists.

The challenge is responding to it.

For many businesses, extending operating hours is not simply a question of switching on the lights. It means recruiting more permanent staff, increasing payroll costs and committing to long-term employment even when the additional demand may only last a few hours each day.

The National Productive Hours Framework changes that calculation.

Instead of asking,

“Can we afford another full-time employee?”

a business asks,

“Can customer demand justify extra four productive hours?”

That is a fundamentally different way of making business decisions.

Once qualified workers are already available within an approved labour directory, businesses can respond to demand more quickly and with far less risk.

A supermarket that previously closed at 8:00 p.m. may decide to remain open until 10:00 p.m.

A warehouse may introduce evening operations during peak periods.

A manufacturer may add production hours to meet new orders without restructuring its entire workforce.

Longer operating hours therefore become a response to business opportunity rather than a response to government instruction.

That distinction matters.

A sustainable 24-Hour Economy cannot be built on directives alone.

It must be built on commercial confidence.

When businesses find it easier to expand, they naturally create more productive hours.

More productive hours mean more people earning incomes.

More incomes increase household spending.

Higher demand encourages businesses to produce more, invest more and employ more people.

Growth begins to feed itself.

That is how thriving economies work.

The National Productive Hours Framework therefore does more than reform recruitment.

It creates the conditions under which the 24-Hour Economy can sustain itself.

It also invites us to rethink how we measure unemployment.

Today, we often classify a young person as employed only after they secure one permanent position.

But should employment in a modern economy be defined so narrowly?

Perhaps the better question is whether every qualified Ghanaian has a fair opportunity to earn an income.

Under this framework, success is no longer measured only by obtaining one permanent job.

It is measured by maintaining continuous access to productive work.

That shift could restore confidence to thousands of young graduates who possess the skills to contribute but remain excluded simply because there are too few permanent vacancies.

The framework does not promise everyone a job.

No labour policy can honestly make that promise.

What it seeks to provide is something equally important, a fairer pathway into work and a labour market that rewards competence before connections, performance before permanence and productivity before bureaucracy.

It is not a proposal to replace permanent employment.

Many professions will always require full-time workers.

Neither is it a proposal to weaken labour protections.

Rather, it complements existing employment by introducing greater flexibility for businesses while creating broader opportunities for workers.

Perhaps that is the conversation Ghana should now be having.

Not simply how to keep businesses open after midnight.

But how to redesign recruitment so that businesses naturally choose to remain open because growth has become easier.

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If we continue organising work for yesterday’s economy, tomorrow’s economy will remain beyond our reach.

But if we build a labour market that gives businesses continuous access to productive hours and gives qualified Ghanaians continuous access to productive work, the 24-Hour Economy will no longer be an aspiration.

It will become the natural outcome of a more productive, more competitive and more inclusive economy.

Because, in the end, a 24-Hour Economy is not built by adding more shifts.

It is built by giving businesses continuous access to productive hours.

 BY KWAME ASARE