Over the last 5 years - in fact since the great recession hit - many companies seem to have concentrated on short term gains - and have rewarded their CEOs with generous bonuses  for producing them.   This is in response to a real or imagined investor need for quick results and dividends - to

Does your boss enhance, or detract from, your productivity? If you ask this question of employees, you might expect them to answer 'enhance' - but they rarely do. Too many people see their boss as 'interfering' or 'meddling', confusing rather than directing them. Does this say something about the employees - and their perceptions versus

I 've written quite a few times in the last year about low productivity figures - across all developed nations.  I've even offered advice on occasions about what might be done to improve the figures - as have better men - and certainly better thinkers - than me. But the figures stubbornly refuse to rise.

Two recent sets of figures from the USA raise a question of 'connectivity'/  Labour productivity refuses to rise - and investment in plant and equipment has declined over the last 10 years.  These can probably be correlated but is there a causal relationship? Well, I can't prove anything but let's just say that labour productivity

Most developed countries have experienced lower rates of productivity development since the great recession - and nobody seems to know why. However, it does seem as though these low growth rates might be with us for some time. For any one country, this means that the key is to simply have a higher growth rate

Most of us want to help our organisations be productive - but we also want to be kind to the environment .  Can these aims be reconciled? Well, yes! - but sometimes it depends on the timeframe you are looking at. Take agriculture as an example. Using pesticides and fertilisers can increase yield (increasing productivity)

Work-life balance is important.  If 'work' takes over, you end up stressed and ineffective.  If 'life' rakes over, you fail to achieve, So, how do we achieve 'balance'? Well, here's a simple tip. When you create your ToDo list and prioritise tasks, make sure you create entries for both sides - the work and the

In the UK, as in quite a few other countries, there is a minimum wage set by government.  In  the UK, this has recently risen fuelled by the introduction of what is called the National Living Wage. (We will ignore, for now, any discussion on whether this means it was impossible to live on the

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is making good progress and we have seen computers doing very well at strategy games like Chess and Go. AI is ideal for situations where a large quantity of data has to be processed as the basis of a 'logical' decision.  This applies in strategy games, and in commercial activities such as

The UK Engineering Employers Federation (EEF) suggests the productivity picture might finally be starting to change. The EEF recently unveiled some mixed findings. On the positive front, its report – Productivity: the state of the manufacturing nation – revealed that over six in ten UK manufacturers (64%) achieved productivity growth in the past two years,