Productivity is the core business of firms and organisations across the economy.
Productivity is about how a business transforms its resources – people, capital, materials and other inputs – into products and services are directly related to business outcomes, such as growth, value creation competitiveness, and profitability.
But business productivity is rarely a key performance indicator for the firm as whole.
Efficiency measures are often used to gauge how to “do more with less” in parts of the production or delivery process. But that’s only half of the story.
“60% of small and medium-sized enterprises do not formally monitor productivity. Complexity and not seeing the relevance of the metric are cited as common reasons.” (K. Penney and J. Pendrill, 2022)
The Productivity Institute helps business leaders to make productivity part of their strategy to create better and more valuable outcomes for their customers and stakeholders.
Productivity is the “business of all leaders” in the firm. When bringing together the operation, employee and customer perspectives, productivity is not an abstract concept, but a practical route to long-term value creation.
Strategic productivity provides an opportunity to refine business strategy beyond just focusing on the top and bottom lines.
Business education is vital to ensure ideas and innovations from our research are helping organisations improve the productivity and outcomes of businesses.
Innovation is vital for productivity growth. Creating new products and services and improving production processes, means increased efficiency of production that ultimately underpins rising living standards. Businesses therefore need to seek constant innovation and improvement.
