Improving Productivity In Business
Nick Goddard
Improving productivity is a perennial challenge for businesses and their leaders.
But doing so requires meaningful investment in skills and human capital.
Put simply, productivity is the state or quality of being productive.
As learning and development specialists who improve business through people, we are seeing improving productivity as a critical focus for our clients right now.
At a big picture level, the UK has been experiencing significantly slower productivity growth than comparable countries over the decade and a half since the global financial crisis. How this can be fixed is sure to be a topic of debate for the upcoming UK election.
Creating Human Capital
There are many complex and contributory factors that result in a lack of productivity in business, but in our experience underinvestment in training and the development of skills – or the creation of human capital, is a critical cause.
Human capital is the economic value of employees’ abilities and skills. Organisations can enhance their human capital through recruitment or investment in training, as well as by implementing management tools and techniques that optimise the productivity of their people. The structured sharing of best practices can also be very valuable.
The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) reported recently, in partnership with YouGov, that almost a third of managers (30%) have done nothing to develop their management and leadership skills in the last three years. Maintaining and improving the value of your human capital is the responsibility of all leaders.
However, people heads and HR leads may feel this responsibility most acutely, along with sales and distribution leaders.
An article in The New Statesman, in association with the CMI, suggests that one of the key ingredients of higher productivity is high-quality management and that
“strong cultures of improvement and long-term focus also drive improved management performance”.
Improving productivity takes consistent nurturing and a genuine commitment to developing your people.
Targeted external intervention can support this and provide the necessary stimulus.
The consequences of choosing NOT to invest in your people may include:
- Low employee engagement, capability, and competence.
- Poor attraction of new talent.
- Losing your most talented people and future leaders.
- Low productivity.
- A failure to achieve your goals and maximise your business potential.
As our MD and Founder, David Nikolich, says...
"If you choose to continually invest in your human capital, then you cannot fail…
However, you can only fail to continually invest in your human capital!"
Improving Your Productivity: ABSTRACT's Approach
“Productivity is never an accident.
It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”
Paul J. Meyer.
Businesses have been, and continue to be, impacted by numerous external economic factors. Global events such as geopolitical conflicts, volatile markets, and the consequences of a worldwide pandemic have tested leadership, business performance, and financial resources in unprecedented ways.
In response to these universal challenges, ABSTRACT have developed tried and tested highly effective performance improvement programmes, aimed at assisting businesses to address their performance and productivity problems proactively.
Our programmes help leaders, particularly those in financial and professional services:
- Develop high-performing teams.
- Drive a more commercial culture.
- Win more clients, and retain them.
We aim to create inclusive leaders, who are strong and considerate master decision makers.
Are you ready to maximise the full potential of your people? Click below to learn more.
