7 Ways to Build Your Business
Seven key ways in which your business can do things smarter and lift its performance.
Why do We Need to Improve Workplace Productivity?
Our economy has flourished in recent years. Much of this success has come from more New Zealanders working more hours, not from increasing productivity.
High levels of labour participation mean that we need to work smarter in order to generate sustainable economic growth and develop a high skill, high wage economy. This means thinking about skills and investment in training, how we organise work and our investment in tools and technology.
If you create a positive culture within your company, people are happy to be there and they want to do good work for the company. That’s the biggest thing.
Pat Coll, Founder and Proprietor
Coll Electrical
You invest in your people, get them talking to you and you also invest in the infrastructure
to make their ideas happen within a reasonable time. The result is a winning team.
Phil Pollett, CEO, Goodtime Food
7 Key Business Drivers
There are seven key drivers of workplace productivity:
1. Building Leadership and Management Capability
2. Creating Productive Workplace Cultures
3. Encouraging Innovation and the Use of Technology
4. Investing in People and Skills
5. Organising Work
6. Networking and Collaboration
7. Measuring What Matters
One or more of these drivers may be the key to making your workplace more productive. You will know what’s right for your business, and you can decide what changes suit you best.
The changes have been worthwhile, but good things take time. It is worth doing and it will happen.
Jackie Simkins, General Manager. Switzer Home
Lifting Your Productivity
Workplace productivity involves exploring all the ways that your workplace can do things better and smarter. It means being open to new ideas and working out how new technologies, products, services and work practices can improve your business.
Productive workplaces are built on teamwork and a shared vision of where a business is heading. There’s a willingness at all levels to keep the learning and investing ins kills and people. A focus on productivity is not just about improving the bottom line; it also provides an opportunity for employee to contribute to the organisation.
You invest in your people, get them talking to you and you also invest in the infrastructure to make their ideas happen within a reasonable time. The result is a winning team.
Phil Pollett, CEO, Goodtime Food
1. Building Leadership and Management Capability
Effective leadership is about having a clear vision of where your business is heading. Leadership is required from individuals and from teams at all levels of the business. It means ensuring staff have the skills and resources to improve their performance and go on learning.
2. Creating Productive Workplace Cultures
Positive relationships between staff, teams and managers are the foundation of productive workplaces. A positive work environment motivates people and helps them commit to an organisation. It is vital to value people’s insights and experience – only then do they feel motivated to go the extra mile.
People are given the freedom to perform and the recognition when they perform. We all contribute and are expected to contribute
Terry, Employee, Information Tools
3. Encouraging Innovation and Technology
Productive workplaces are innovative in the way they use technology, and in their processes and operations. A company’s ability to innovate depends on a range of factors – the skills of employees, its workplace culture, how work is organised and a shared vision of where the business is heading.
4. Investing in People and Skills
In a modern economy, the skills, attitudes and knowledge of people are a company’s biggest asset. The more skills people have, the more they can contribute. They will be more capable with new technology and more open to change. Skills and knowledge are the lifeblood of productive workplaces.
5. Organising Work
Productive workplaces are flexible. They have structures and processes that enable them to adapt and grow as products, technology and markets change. They are characterised by an openness in the way they plan and communicate; information is freely and regularly shared across teams and networks.
Improving the skill levels and work processes around the machinery was just as important as the machinery itself.
Steve Silver, CEO, Cottonsoft
6. Networking and Collaboration
Workplace productivity is enhanced when people are well connected to their industry. Collaborating with others might mean joining national industry bodies, trade organisations or entering into regional business clusters. These types of networks provide access to contacts, new ideas and new technologies.
7. Measuring What Matters
The final key driver is measuring the impact of the workplace productivity initiatives you have underway so that you underway so that you understand the things that are making the biggest difference. Your Business has to ensure it has the information systems to tell you how well you are doing.
This business is just as much theirs as it is ours and the more you believe and work your business towards that, the more successful you will be.
Mavis Mullins, Director
Paewai Mullins Shearing
Take a Snapshot of Your Business
How well is your business doing? We have developed a practical diagnostic tool, which you can use to take a snapshot of how efficiently your business is running.
Help Available
Case study material is available which shows how a range of New Zealand businesses have met the productivity challenge. There is also a network of business development consultants throughout New Zealand who can help you improve the productivity of your business.
Download 7 Ways to Build Your Business [pdf 150 KB, 2 pages]