Tackling the UK’s Productivity Challenge

• Productivity growth in the U.K. has faltered for nearly 15 years
• Since 2010, GDP growth per hour worked has risen by a yearly average of 0.5%, lower than the figures for the U.S., France and Germany, and well below the U.K. figures recorded for the previous 13 years.

Hence Workday recently released a research report into the causes and possible cures for this malaise, noting the potential for AI to add extra productivity to U.K. enterprises.

Pell says his article digs a little deeper into some of the reasons productivity is lower than it could be and what companies are doing to address the issue.

Productivity Is Personal

• Increasing productivity isn’t the same as making people work harder.
• Entirely different changes like better tools, streamlined processes and upskilling can all raise productivity, and may actually make work easier.
• We asked employees and business leaders at large U.K. enterprises what motivates them to be more productive.
• The top answer was different for employees and leaders:
  • For employees, wage growth came first, whether through salary increases, bonuses or promotion.
  • Business leaders put this third, with job satisfaction being the top answer – wage growth came third for this group.
• Only 19% of employees said contribution to their company’s growth was an important motivator.
• If productivity is to be increased, then that success needs to be shared with the workforce to some extent.
• When productivity is rewarded, personal and organisational aims become aligned
• It’s a win-win.
• Both groups put work-life balance as their second highest motivation for increased productivity
• For most, being productive means tasks and targets can be achieved calmly within normal working hours and leisure time fully enjoyed
• Finding ways to increase focus, reduce friction and eliminate unnecessary tasks is the smartest path to increased productivity without making people unhappy

Barriers To Productivity

• We asked what people thought were the main obstacles to increased productivity.
• The leading answers were a lack of engagement, alongside a lack of incentives to be productive, both agreed by 41% of employees:
  • Engagement is a measure of the sense of involvement and enthusiasm felt for the organisation’s endeavours.
  • Many employees don’t feel they have a reason to be more productive, whether that’s through financial incentives, personal growth or the sense of a shared mission.
  • People need to feel invested, involved and valued, that they share in success, take responsibility, feel fulfilled and are properly rewarded for their work.
  • Meaningful bonus systems for all employees that reflect their contribution to commercial goals make even more sense.
• Inadequate technology was cited by 35% of employees and 28% of leaders as a barrier to improved productivity:
  • A great deal of enterprise software is not fit for purpose, onerous to use and generates more work than it helps get done.
  • Fortunately, unlike cultural or structural issues, it’s an obstacle that can be eliminated without much difficulty by investing in modern, better connected, streamlined systems.
• The fourth most popular reason given for low productivity was simply “too many meetings”, cited by 34% of employees and 36% of leaders:
  • Meetings that have no measurable objectives shouldn’t happen, and technological alternatives to meetings are well established.
  • Leaders should ensure meetings are focused on concrete outcomes, rather than general catch-ups and status updates, and reduce the numbers attending to those able to make a specific contribution.
  • Very often meetings become a habit, rather than a necessity.
• Poor collaboration was also cited as a significant contributing factor to productivity losses, but again, we already have many ways to improve communication and collaboration which aren’t meetings.

• The leading answer was investment in technology, which 52% of leaders say is happening at their company.
• It was also encouraging to find that 39% of leaders are actively working on measures to improve workplace engagement and culture which appears to be the most common cause of lost productivity.
• A similar number (38%) are increasing investment in upskilling existing employees, an essential requirement given the pace of technological change.
• Unfortunately, only 20% of leaders and just 13% of employees say their organisations are working to reduce the number of meetings, despite them being a genuine barrier to getting work done for more than a third of all our survey respondents.

The above article covers some important factors affecting productivity levels achieved by any organisation in any sector, public as well as private – but not all – others include an agreed corporate plan upfront to best ‘align’ all activities, a set of performance measures all employees can understand and follow, end-to-end reviews of key processes involved to identify all major sources of waste (not just useless meetings) and the scope to use existing resources more efficiently before any major investment is made in new technology plus changes to accommodate it.