BERNARD KEANE highlights the ‘ticking time bomb’ that is the global disparity between company profiteering and wage growth in an article published by smartcompany.com.au If Australia’s Productivity Commission really wants to link productivity to higher wages, it should look at the market power of corporations. The most important part of the Productivity Commission’s interim …
Category: 16. Organisations
Aug 18
Why Isn’t New Technology Making Us More Productive?
Innovations like cloud computing and artificial intelligence are hailed as engines of a coming productivity revival. But a broad payoff across the economy has been elusive according to Steve Lohr, writing in the New York Times For years, it has been an article of faith in corporate America that cloud computing and artificial intelligence will …
Jul 24
The ticking time bomb at work
Top executives and capitalists might support ‘levelling up’ but should hang their heads in shame after reading the following important article by Rithika Ramamurthy, Economic Justice Editor at Nonprofit Quarterly, entitled ‘Owning Our Labor: Productivity, Profits, and Power’ If you performed a task at four times the rate of productivity, shouldn’t you receive four times …
Jun 03
Unions can be good for labor and business
I well remember the 70s, the days of ‘Red Robbo’ who destroyed the British owned car industry with outrageous, incessant strikes for more totally unjustified pay rises – and sitting around a boardroom table whilst the Union reps led the meeting and the CEO wld just sit there and dare not disagree – so read …
Apr 22
Five Days a Week in the Office? It’s Better for Everyone.
Allison Schrager makes several good points against 100% WFH – she is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.” After a year of Zoom meetings and awkward virtual happy hours, New York’s youngest aspiring financiers …
Apr 06
Your boss wants to boil you slowly like a frog
Chloe Berger, writing for Fortune.com, says beating the Monday blues will be especially trying for Google employees. Workers are required to come into company headquarters three times a week. But according to Laszlo Bock, former chief of Google human resources and current CEO of Humu, this hybrid model won’t be around much longer. Bock says that …
Mar 28
The COVID ‘productivity boom’ is a myth
Janice C. Eberly is reported on by ‘Business Insider’ – she claims that, with remote work, employees lose the connectivity that might help them advance their careers – in particular: New research shows the GDP would have fallen more steeply in 2020 if people weren’t able to work from home. But working from home prevents …
Mar 20
Employers want workers in the office for the company culture, not productivity
Rebecca Greenfield, writing in Bloomberg News, raises some interesting thoughts concerning WFH – especially those of Mark Mullenweg, founder of ‘WordPress‘, the software which brings you this post, and CEO of web software maker Automattic, who has operated for 16 years without a home base Ask executives why they’re desperate to get workers back in …
Jan 05
The rise of intangible capitalism
A report in the Jordan Times heralds the future for us all – indeed, it has already started – written by Eric Hazan, a managing partner at McKinsey & Company, Jonathan Haskel, Professor of Economics at Imperial College London. and Stian Westlake, Executive Director of Policy and Research at Nesta In a 2014 book, the …
Nov 22
Having the power to put a spanner in the works pays very well
Torsten Bell, CEO of the Resolution Foundation and reported by the Guardian, claims: “If your skills mean you can hold things up at work you’ll be rewarded far better than the easily replaceable” Power matters. It’s central to international relations and politics, but doesn’t always feature prominently in economics. The power that does get attention, …
Nov 14
Digital Solutions empower the employee experience
Enterprises are still adjusting to hybrid work. While many challenges still stand in the way of efficiency, new digital solutions are accelerating new channels of communication, new ways of networking, managing, and generally helping employees thrive – the following reads as an ad in disguise, but it’s still interesting If there’s one thing organizations have …
Sep 03
4 reasons hybrid offices won’t work
A provocative article by Joseph Woodbury, CEO of Neighbor, and published by fastcompany.com – arguing that WFH full-time is not a sensible productivity tactic In a singular (and hopefully rare) global pandemic, we seem to have collectively forgotten our need for each other. Without thinking twice, companies are rushing to roll out remote work policies …
Aug 27
History tells us what will decide whether we work from home in the future
Another good article from Ross Gittins, economics editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, who always peddles a lot of sense By now it seems cut and dried. The pandemic has taught us to love the benefits of working from home and stopped bosses fearing it, so we’ll keep doing it once the virus has …
Jul 10
World’s largest trial of a shorter work week
In an article for Mashable.com, Amanda Yeo reports that Iceland ran the world’s largest trial of a shorter work week – and says ‘the results will (not) shock you’ The trial was run from 2015 to 2019. An analysis of the results was finally published this week, and surprise! Everyone was happier, healthier, and more …
Jun 10
A government review of social care
The following impressive, yet depressing, article from John Seddon, head of Vanguard Consultants – I have no connection with them, and never even met him, but regular readers will know I’m an admirer of their approach to productivity improvement which seems far more efficient and effective than all others peddled by the bigger consultancies, including …
Sep 14
Long-term planning for remote work
Extracts about WFH follow from an article in the HBR (Harvard Business Review) by Mark Johnson and Josh Suskewicz Mark Zuckerberg recently shared his plans for the future of remote work at Facebook. By 2030, he promised, at least half of Facebook’s 50,000 employees would be working from home. “We are going to be the most …
Aug 21
COVID brings productivity into sharp focus
An article follows which was published by the ICAEW – Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales – it helps explain what the strangely named ‘Be the Business’ organisation is actually doing to improve UK SME productivity levels – after three years of trying, maybe COVID can explain their lack of any quantified success …
Jul 28
Are office clusters as crucial to productivity as they once were?
More grist for the pandemic mill from Paul Ormerod writing for cityam.com The Prime Minister is now demanding that offices reopen to revive economic activity in the centres of towns and cities. But there is not yet much sign of a return to work. The preferences of the workforce are an important factor in …
Jul 21
How a Fully Distributed Company Keeps Its Team Engaged
A useful article follows from Inc. by Matt Haber, their San Francisco Bureau chief If you’ve had to adapt to working from home in the last few months, you could learn a few things from Matt Mullenweg – the co-founder of website-building platform WordPress (as used by this website) and Automattic, the parent company Mullenweg lives in …
Jun 09
Chinese Companies’ Response to Covid-19
A very interesting article just published in the HBR by Das Narayandas, Vinay Hebbar and Liangliang Li – it offers many lessons for western companies, big and small The past four months have provided an opportunity to study a once-in-a-lifetime moment — how companies function during an unprecedented global pandemic while also navigating an …
May 09
How to make ‘remote work’ more productive
An interesting slant on the pandemic impact follows – published by FastCompany.com and written by behavioural scientist Kristen Berman It might seem like the glorious era of remote work is upon us, driven by a pandemic push. Zoom! Slack! Who needs the office? The promise of uncompromised productivity paired with freedom is alluring. While software …
Apr 25
Office productivity
OFFICES ARE ABOUT TO CAUSE PRODUCTIVITY TO EXPLODE So claims Mike Phillips in one of Bisnow.com’s featured series on the ‘Future of Work’ – it’s more realisation that the pandemic has given a massive kick-start to many business changes needed given the enabling technology has been around but not used well for many years now …
Apr 20
A shorter work week?
Some interesting views from The Socialist, an Australian publication Microsoft recently granted its workers in Japan five Friday’s off in a row, resulting in a 40% productivity jump. Similar recent experiments have resulted in healthier, happier more efficient workers. Around the world the idea of reducing working hours is a topic of debate and discussion …
Apr 12
M/S says “Remote working is here for good”
An Inc.com report by Jason Aten follows – with only a few changes: If nothing else, in these past few weeks, we’ve learned that as a whole, people are quite resourceful when it comes to figuring out how to adapt and stay productive, even in extraordinary circumstances. You have to admit that it’s impressive how …
Apr 10
Will the Pandemic make us more productive?
The following thoughts, published by Bloomberg Opinion, are from Karl W. Smith, a former assistant professor of economics at the University of North Carolina and vice president for federal policy at the Tax Foundation. The Great Suppression will continue to cause enormous economic and personal hardship for scores of millions of Americans. It is possible, …
Mar 17
A pandemic positive!
Hamza Mudassar, writing in ‘Entrepreneur’, believes the global Covid-19 pandemic currently raging around the world ‘will shape businesses for decades to come’ Black swan events, such as economic recessions and pandemics, change the trajectory of governments, economies and businesses — altering the course of history. The Black Death in the 1300s broke the long-ingrained feudal …
Mar 09
Important trends for SME productivity
All business managers want their teams to get more done in less time – this means there needs to be a focus on prioritising efficient workflows while remaining consistently effective. According to therealtimereport.com, there are some important business productivity trends that all business owners and their teams need to be aware of : 1. The …
Sep 08
Beware ‘snooptech’
Ben Gallagher, co-founder of B+A, a management consultancy, raised an interesting slant on new digital possibilities ‘Snooptech’, as the Telegraph reported recently, is a £2.7billion industry The increasing sophistication of digital tools, as well as the continued stagnancy of productivity in the UK, has created a market for technology whose sole purpose is to allow companies …
Feb 10
Wealth gains and distribution
US Fed Chairman Jerome Powell believes our two greatest challenges for the next decade are ‘the widening wealth gap and sluggish productivity’ But Lawrence Fuller, in an article for Seeking Alpha, claims the Fed’s attempts to create a wealth effect by inflating the value of financial assets has mostly benefited the top 10%, and even …
Oct 25
The perfect working environment?
According to an article by Michael Odell in The Times, Basecamp is a US software/ tech company that supposedly runs without the scourge of 80 hour weeks, unrealistic deadlines, weekend emails and meetings Two American guys, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, run Basecamp – they’re also authors of a new book called It Doesn’t have …
Sep 29
UK manufacturing to become ‘smarter’
The UK magazine Drives & Controls has just reported that a group of UK manufacturing business leaders and academics have joined forces with the government to create the Made Smarter Commission (MSC) which aims to make UK manufacturing “smarter”. The inaugural meeting of the commission was chaired by Siemens CEO Professor Juergen Maier and Business Secretary …
Jul 16
NHS must suppress demand and cut waste
The UK’s NHS (National Health Service) is widely considered to be a national treasure – it’s also the biggest employer in Europe with around 1,500,000 staff: Healthcare services for all ailments are offered ‘free at the point of delivery’ (except such as dentistry, some prescriptions and eye tests ) to all UK citizens Poor families, …
May 19
Freelancing is good for many
Freelance employment should be used much more by most organisations in sectors which: Need certain specialist skills, but not on a full-time basis Have fluctuating demand patterns making employment of a full-time workforce to supply in good time prohibitively expensive Using freelance labour (say 20% part-time, 80% full-time) is much like outsourcing some processes – …
Mar 19
The birth of life insurance
In 1744, two Presbyterian clergymen, Alexander Webster and Robert Wallace, decided to set up a life-insurance fund that would provide pensions for the widows and orphans of dead clergymen Each of their church’s ministers would pay a small portion of his income into the fund which would invest the money If a minister died, his …
Jan 29
Clusters of SMEs are a priority
According to research conducted by Opus Energy, the top three geographical areas in the UK where SMEs (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises) have productivity issues are: West Midlands North East London To compete, SMEs there are being forced to implement a wave of changes, including: Introducing flexible working Paying employees above the average wage Offering …
Jan 15
Scrap traditional organisation structures
Alison Vekshin, a freelance journalist, says: “Companies have followed a linear top-down organisation structure, but that approach is quickly becoming outdated – business leaders now favour a more flexible structure, and have seen that workers are more productive and innovative in an autonomous work environment” The traditional linear organisation chart was designed to ‘create order …
Apr 15
Passports to productivity Improvement?
Some say the ‘Productivity Puzzle’ is the result of a storm of problems affecting both supply and demand in G7 developed nations viz: Supply: In the past, major technological advances (aka Schumpeter discontinuities) enabled quantum leaps in productivity levels – G7 nations would all adopt them and improve at about the same rate – now, without more …
Apr 01
Diageo appoints a CPO
Many companies employ inspectors and quality controllers in an effort to minimise waste and boost good output volumes Very few indeed have anyone specifically in charge of productivity or widespread employment of best practices, whether from internal or external sources Now, at long last, a major company has appointed a Chief Productivity Officer (CPO) – …
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