I remember once walking past an office and the staff in there were obviously enjoying themselves. They were laughing - at what, I know not. My first thought was ‘How odd. Shouldn’t they be taking their work more seriously? We pay them to work, not to play. “ But, of course, first thoughts are quite often wrong thoughts. This
In this world where many workers are still workings from home - or hybrid working - some managers find it hard to assess the performance of their staff. There has been a sharp increase in the use of employee monitoring software - often seen as intrusive and unfair by the employees themselves. Yet we know that
A very simple way of thinking about productivity is to identify the things that block or slow down throughput and eliminate them. I know this is an oversimplification because in some case, removing a bottleneck just creates another one further down the process …. but you will almost certainly have made some impact by removing
I get concerned when I see famous people in all sort of fields (‘celebrities’?) give advice to youngsters saying something like “You can be anything you want to be, do anything you want to do. You just need a goal and to work very hard.” Now positivism is good - and encouraging youngsters to work hard
Someone once told me if you want innovation in engineering, don’t ask an engineer. They’ll give you accepted (and workable) engineering solutions but they won’t give you groundbreaking, innovative or creative solutions. What you need is to ask a non-engineer to give you ideas for new ways of addressing your problem - and then ask an
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is touted as ‘the next big thing’ in productivity improvement - and there is little doubt that we will see lots of examples of AI taking over relatively menial, snd some more sophisticated, tasks over the next couple of decades. However, many of us have already seen quite a few examples of
Most people assume that some people are more productive than others - and for some jobs, that is clearly true. But for many people, their productivity is determined by ‘the system’, the technology and the productivity or performance of the people around them - at the previous workstation, for example. So, should we worry about individual
Many firms put in systems to improve productivity, by monitoring what is going on and how hard people are working. They manage - or micro-manage - the time of their employees and how it is filled. But they’ve forgotten something. Employees don’t work well when they are micro-managed. They work well when they know their role in
Do you have a dog? If so, you know that, above all else, dogs value ... food, yes, but consistent behaviour from their owner. That is how you train your dog - by applying consistent behaviour tied to small rewards and giving praise when they do something you perceive as good. You make it clear
Last week I suggested that technology might be useful in helping drive productivity forward. This week, I am changing my view after further reflection. Yes, over time firms have used technology to improve their business performance. But there is some evidence to suggest the pattern is now somewhat changed. It seems as though well-performing firms are using