An employee perspective on Productivity

BobQ

We often talk of the UK having low productivity. The report linked below has recently been issued providing an employee view. May interest some people.

http://www.smith-institute.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Working-harder-not-smarter.pdf

Thrugelmir

I'm always nervous about employee surveys. As there's many people who don't grasp the wider ethics of what going to work is. The lack of management resonates. With people promoted from within often not on ability but who they know.

Who is going to lead the cultural change though. There's the challenge.

CLAPTON

what we can be absolutley certain is that the low increase in productiviy in recent years, has absolutely nothing to do with the massive inflow of cheap labour.

chucknorris

Before I became a quantity surveyor (long story, but cut short, I was not sufficiently motivated when I was younger to strive and put enough effort in to be a 'success' in life), I was an electrician, and time served in the shipyards on Tyneside. When I was 21, I went to work in a German shipyard In Hamburg, I was immediately taken, and very impressed with how proud the Germans were of the work that they did. I had never seen anything like that before in my life, I immediately knew why they were doing so much better than us.

zagubov

I worry that this country prefers work to be treated as a pastime for gentleman amateurs, with effort being a sign of a character flaw and the dream scenario is to aspire to be like the gentry and not sully yourself with work at all, or failing that, make your living playing a sport (which maybe should for real be a pastime for gentleman amateurs). The curse of the class system!

BobQ

I found it interesting that people thought they were working harder but were no more productive. Which perhaps comes back to the statement that cultural change is needed to make industry more productive. The idea that you just reduce desk sizes, make more open plan offices, or indeed paint walls in bright colours and you make people more productive is so so simplistic.

globalds

I think it fails to recognise how disheartening it can be for employees to be a part of an unproductive system.

Just about anyone doing any task for a reasonable amount of times observes it's weaknesses.

To watch these impact on productivity is bad ..To watch it and then have no authority to change the process but also to be partly blamed and to have it used as a reason not to be given pay rises ..Now this is the point when employees feel removed from the notion of productivity in the work place.

It does seem that productivity gains are rarely shared ..But any lack of progress is seen as reason to withhold any improvements for employees.

CLAPTON

globalds wrote: »

I think it fails to recognise how disheartening it can be for employees to be a part of an unproductive system.

Just about anyone doing any task for a reasonable amount of times observes it's weaknesses.

To watch these impact on productivity is bad ..To watch it and then have no authority to change the process but also to be partly blamed and to have it used as a reason not to be given pay rises ..Now this is the point when employees feel removed from the notion of productivity in the work place.

It does seem that productivity gains are rarely shared ..But any lack of progress is seen as reason to withhold any improvements for employees.

which is why people are still earning the same as pre ww2

Sapphire

zagubov wrote: »

I worry that this country prefers work to be treated as a pastime for gentleman amateurs, with effort being a sign of a character flaw and the dream scenario is to aspire to be like the gentry and not sully yourself with work at all, or failing that, make your living playing a sport (which maybe should for real be a pastime for gentleman amateurs). The curse of the class system!

Not sure whether it's anything to do with a 'class system'. The attitude you are describing is possibly applicable to people like country gentry – a decreasing number of people in this country.

It's more to do with lack of drive and ambition – a work ethic. I don't know why that's missing in many people in the UK (though not everyone). Perhaps it is to do with lack of education, discipline and having it too easy? Perhaps it is partly because some have never experienced real hardship and are cushioned by state handouts (aka taxpayers)? In the past in the UK, people had to work (and were desperate to do so), or they and their families literally starved to death…

MPD

It all starts in school. Teachers are supposed to entertain pupils now and are competing with mobile phones, social media and more often than not parents that neither value education nor hard work.

There is a clear class difference (if we use private school attendance as a proxy for class) but with the "higher" classes having a far superior attitude to education with a clear work ethic.

kabayiri

We have pretty much outsourced all the industry which needs high volume of labour. We are never ever going to create a factory complex with half a million employees, like the FoxConn site.

This leaves doing more with fewer people. That requires capital investment, and why would you do that, when you have a queue of cheap migrant labour to pluck from.

An example. 25 years ago you could put your money into a machine and an automated car wash would clean your car. Flash forward to today, and I can watch half a dozen Iranians wash my car, all bustling away.

I don't care because it seems cheap. The government doesn't care because it can crow about another half a dozen people in employment.

But, efficient and productive? I hardly think so.