National Productivity Week 27th January 2025 | Visit Website

A diverse community of leading experts, policymakers and practitioners

The Institute’s key research themes are led by ten academic partners spread across the UK.

We’re a UK-wide research organisation exploring what productivity means for business

Businesses are crucial to solving the UK’s productivity problems.

The most successful and profitable
businesses are the most productive

Businesses that are more productive are able to produce more output with the same amount of input, which can lead to higher profits and faster growth.

Strategic Productivity for the Leadership Team

Productivity for business is about how an organisation effectively uses its resources (people, machines, knowledge and technology) to improve its performance (profit change). Profit change is driven by what a business does, how it does it, and for what cost.

The Productivity Institute has determined five drivers of business productivity – innovation and digital, worker skills and well-being, leadership and management, marketing and communication and access to finance.

These drivers work best when strategically aligned with boardroom functions – Finance; Human Resources; Operations, Technology and Digital; and Marketing and Communications.

Read Strategic Productivity for the Leadership Team to find out why firms need to be actively talking about productivity, identifying the key indicators that create productivity in their business, and then aligning their productivity strategy across all boardroom functions.

Read Productivity Through People: New Opportunities for CHROs to discover the new opportunities Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs) have to activate six specific people-based levers to spur productivity and bring their insights to the C-Suite to contribute to a more strategic discussion on productivity.

The Productivity Institute’s Managing Director has delivered two Masterclasses on Strategic Productivity, hosted by The Conference Board in collaboration with The Productivity Institute. Watch both below:

Masterclass #1: Why Productivity Matters. Insights for CHROs and Their Teams (13.3.24)

Masterclass #2: Making Productivity Strategic for Business. Tackling Today’s Productivity-Innovation Paradox (11.9.24)

Business productivity insights

What is productivity and why does it matter? The Productivity Primer is designed to explain the many facets of productivity, how it can be best understood for firms and place, and how it contributes to inclusive growth

Other insights insights into business productivity:

Of chickens and eggs: Exporting, innovation novelty and productivity Why are exporting firms more productive? Do productive firms export or is it exporting that leads to higher productivity?

Is there a link between small business leadership and productivity? Leadership quality has been proposed as an important explanation for differences in the productivity performance between so-called ‘frontier’ and ‘laggard’ firms.

Productivity Puzzles podcast: How do business leaders think about productivity Why should firms care about productivity? How does it add to the bottom line? What exactly drives productivity? And how can you get better at it? Find out in this discussion with business leaders.

Productivity Puzzles podcast: What makes firms productive? Listen to data-driven insights and expert opinions converge to shed light on what makes firms truly productive.

Productivity Puzzles podcast: New business formation and productivity Why do we need new firms? How important is business creation for employment and productivity? LA discussion of how and why the business environment needs to change and what policies need to be put in place to see more new firm creation and what is needed to help them grow and become more productive.

Insights

Finance, Investment and Productivity Growth

Call for entries: contributions to the Elgar Encyclopedia of Productivity

Can an industrial strategy help drive productivity growth?