Category: 16. Organisations

NHS – ‘The Times Health Commission’ recommendations

The Times reported that Aneurin Bevan, architect of the UK’s NHS, summed up its founding principle by saying: “Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune, the cost of which should be shared by the community” But what Bevan did …

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NHS – Measures needed?

Most patients applaud the individual efforts of their doctors, nurses and other NHS staff when treated by them – they clapped even more during the Covid pandemic But, despite more and more being spent on the NHS and many more doctors and nurses being trained, demand keeps rising whilst service levels keep falling All sorts …

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An ‘AILING NHS’?

Under the heading ‘Ailing Health’ a leader article in The Times claimed: “The NHS is delivering poor outcomes and value for money” despite average UK citizens now enjoying much longer, healthier, pain-free lives – this laudable success has had a perverse consequence because increased old-age increases attendant old-age diseases and they need significantly more costly medical …

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UK Civil Service expansion ended whilst quality of services to rise!

The Chancellor has announced a cap on civil servant headcount across Whitehall ‘to stop any further expansion, increase efficiencies and boost productivity’ – apart from an overwhelming sense of deja vu, one wonders what the impact of this latest initiative will be on individual processes remaining staff have to follow and so the quality of services …

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German army efficiency grid

A useful thought follows, dredged up from an old copy of ‘Bluffers Guide‘ re consultancy which, in many ways, continues to be relevant today whilst also raising a chuckle or two The German army was once renowned for its efficiency – but how did they manage this? It was said to be because of the …

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WFH – A clash of productivity and morality?

An interesting viewpoint from the ever-controversial Elon Musk follows which is copied from an article in a publication of which, sadly, I no longer have  the details One prominent figure who has taken a strong stance against remote work is Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla. In recent statements, Musk not only criticised the productivity …

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The problem is the rest, not the best

A new report from McKinsey Global Institute in the HBR by Charles Atkins, Asutosh Padhi and Olivia White finds that U.S. productivity growth has slowed in the last 15 years to 1.4% annual growth (as compared to long-term rates of 2.2% since 1948) – it also found striking variations in productivity among leading and lagging …

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Big Bad Data Is Sapping Your Team’s Productivity

A useful article on the importance of data quality, published in the Harvard Business Review and written by Thomas C. Redman, aka the ‘Data Doc’, President of Data Quality Solutions. Data science was supposed to create a new productivity boom but, for many companies, that boom never arrived. What’s gone wrong? While companies have invested …

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Elon Musk’s rules of ‘insane productivity’

Like many others, Ariana Baio lists Elon Musk’s six rules of ‘insane productivity’ in indy100.com which Musk sent to all his Twitter employees – they make good sense, as far as they go, albeit they’re sure not silver bullets for becoming super super rich – but then he applies his old-school Theory X man-management views, …

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Stretching police productivity

A new report from across the pond by Police Chief Joel F. Shults proposes the incorporation of auxiliary private security agents in non-core areas such as administration and other ancillary tasks so as to provide the public with a better police service and vastly improve current charge rates for more serious crime What are the …

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Increasing productivity won’t lead to higher wages, it’ll just increase corporate profits

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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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, …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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A government review of social care

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