PRODUCTIVITY DRIVERS
Get More Productive
The following productivity drivers give an overview of the types of changes you can make to get your workplace more productive;
- building better leadership and management
- organising work
- networking and collaborating
- investing in your people and their skills
- encouraging innovation and using technology to get ahead
- creating productive workplace culture
- measuring what matters.
For more information about the productivity drivers, read the Workplace Productivity Challenge report.
Building Leadership and Management
Effective leadership is about having a clear vision of where your business is heading. It's about identifying new opportunities and inspiring your team to pursue those opportunities. Leadership is required from individuals and from teams.
Building leadership and management includes:
- encouraging leadership at every level of the business
- leading by example and creating a positive and productive work environment
- making sure your staff have the skills and resources to improve their learning and go on learning
- investing in management development and training
- supporting innovative thinking and making use of new ideas.
Organising Work
Productive workplaces have structures and processes that enable them to adapt and grow as products, technology and markets change. A well-organised workplace is able to get the best out its staff and technology.
Organising work includes:
- making sure that all employees understand their role in helping your workplace achieve its goals
- recognizing and rewarding people whose efforts support your firm's goals
- regularly analysing work processes and work flows
- encouraging staff to make suggestions about how the workplace can be better organised
- regularly sharing information across teams, processes and networks.
Networking and Collaborating
You can improve your workplace productivity by exchanging ideas and information with others in your industry. Collaborating with others can reduce the cost of doing business and give you access to new ideas and new technologies.
Networking and collaborating includes:
- building relationships with other businesses and industry bodies in your sector
- joining regional or national industry/trade organisations
- creating good business relationships with suppliers and other organisations that add value to your business
- getting involved in local, regional or national government agencies or programmes (eg, NZ Trade and Enterprise).
Investing in People and Skills
The more skills your staff have, the more innovative they can be. They will also be more capable with new technology. Skilled workers can also work more quickly with fewer mistakes. They generally require less supervision, accept more responsibility and are better communicators. Training leads to higher skills and wages and lower staff turnover.
Investing in people and skills includes:
- giving employees the training they need to be effective
- providing all employees with opportunities for formal learning (eg, industry qualifications, job specific training)
- structuring the workplace so that experienced employees can give support/coaching to less experienced staff
- auditing the skill level of your employees, and making sure there are high levels of literacy, numeracy and computer skills
- providing staff with personal career development discussions or plans.
Encouraging Innovation and the Use of Technology
Innovation is a key part of raising workplace productivity. Productive workplaces are innovative in the way they use technology, and plan and organise themselves. They generally employ more highly-skilled and highly-paid workers and through innovation they increase their market share.
Encouraging innovation and the use of technology includes:
- working out what new technologies could be useful to your business
- regularly investing in research and development
- consulting employees and giving them training when new technology is introduced
- being open to innovation and doing things differently
- giving people opportunities to suggest new ideas or processes.
Creating Productive Workplace Cultures
Positive relationships between staff, teams and managers are a feature of productive workplaces. A positive work environment motivates people and helps them commit to the organisation. People feel encouraged to 'go the extra mile'.
It's also important to value people's insights and experience. Their ideas can help your workplace to do things smarter and better. That means your business will become more innovative and productive over time.
Creating productive workplace cultures includes:
- treating people at all levels of the business well
- all staff sharing the same goals and values
- all employees having the chance to suggest how they could improve their part of the business
- rewarding participation and good ideas
- gathering feedback on staff attitudes and ideas for improvement.
Measure what Matters
It is really important to assess the value of any investment you make in improving your workplace productivity. This helps you understand the things that make the biggest difference. For example, is it the size of your business operation, the skill levels of your staff, the size of your market or some other factor?
Measuring what matters includes:
- making sure information systems provide the information needed to work out how well your business is doing
- measuring performance against a range of goals, rather than just focusing on financial performance
- identifying key performance measures/indicators and regularly measuring them throughout the year
- making sure all employees know what the key performance measures are
- measuring or monitoring customer satisfaction, employee morale and supplier feedback
- benchmarking your organisation against industry best practice.