The UK Government is set to fund a business-led initiative designed to improve management skills and business productivity, after Chancellor Philip Hammond’s announcement within the Autumn Statement 2016. The new UK Productivity Council will help

There are lots of blogs and magazine articles offering 'productivity hacks'. What impact do these have on the productivity of an organisation? Well, most of them are aimed at personal productivity.  They may help some

How will Brexit affect UK productivity? Well, it looks as though tax revenues will be lower.  But employment looks to be holding steady. The uncertainty will lead to slower investment by some firms. But the

Just last week there was a near collision between a passenger jet and a drone. Drones have, in fact, had quite a bad press.  Yet their potential is immense. There are all sorts of ways

Frontier companies are those who operate at the technology frontier - early and effective adopters.  Unfortunately in the UK, there are few such companies and far too many laggards who adopt technology late and often

Sometimes it seems  difficult to get the productivity message over to people - the young aren't interested and it seem to be way down the priority list of many business people and politicians. So, perhaps

One of my great 'life lessons' came about from reading a quotation which I think is attributed to the Dalai Lama. "If you are in control of a situation, there is no need to worry.

Do your employees turn up at 9am and leave at 5pm, having completed their day's work.  Was it satisfying for you to watch them beavering away?  Were they productive?  How much more productive might they

When you hire new people how do you induct them into the organisation?  Too often this consists of introductions, 'policy sessions', issuing of email ids and passwords .... and little else.  Your new people are

Automation brings rewards to companies that invest.  The auto industry has installed many thousands of robots over the last 10 years - numbers of employed people have fallen, quality has risen, productivity is up. Great

Japan is offering employment subsidies to organisations that improve their productivity.  So 'winning' companies get a double boost. Is this a sensible role for government - to reward the successful? One reason for their action

The relentless rise of technology and the willingness of men to experiment means we are likely to see a merging of mankind and technology over the next couple of hundred years - producing real cyborgs.

More firms are allowing workers to come to the office in less formal attire.  Does this have an impact on productivity? There is little research on the issue.  The arguments seem to boil down to:

Nations are (quite rightly) urged to improve educational standards and attainments to help boost national productivity.  An educated - and skilled - workforce is a key underpinning of higher productivity. This is actually a vicious

We know that teams that share values tend to knit together better.  A culture in which people 'get on' and work for each other is considered to be productive. Yet, tension can provide creative sparks;

Some countries are much more productive than others. One would assume that this gives the less productive countries lots of scope to learn what works and what doesn't - and boost their own productivity ...

As i write this, Donald Trump has just accepted the nomination as Republican candidate for the US presidency. Now Trump is certainly a controversial figure and i am not going to give my  view on

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI)together with Lloyds Banking Group, the ScaleUp Institute & Aston Business School, has launched a new report, Lifting the Trophy, profiling scale-up insights into raising productivity within firms. In 2013,

Many people are not at their most productive on Friday afternoons. They procrastinate, prolong and prevaricate - picking issues up on Monday when they are (hopefully) refreshed and revitalised. So, why not use this fact

The UK public has voted to leave the EU.  There are numerous reasons given - but they don't matter anymore ... except inso far as the EU learns what the public don't like about the

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

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

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

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