Written by Eleonora Vanello
In the run-up to Christmas, we will share some of the learnings from the over 30 Productivity Club events and national conference that took place in 2022.
This is an opportunity to catch up on the insights from businesses and experts across the country on solutions and opportunities to increase business performance.
In this article we will go through the learnings we have picked up from this year’s Productivity Matters 2022. The theme of the conference was ‘New Ways of Working’ and precisely how these may be adopted and embraced to boost business performance and productivity.
Highlights:
- Communication is critical in implementing any new approaches to work. In fact, involving employees in the process and being clear on the expectations are instrumental.
- The pandemic brought a huge amount of innovation by necessity by accelerating a digital revolution and a workplace transformation.
- Employment quality matters as it’s positively correlated to innovation. Businesses should invest in fair work to unleash their employees’ potential and allow them to innovate by feeling confident in sharing their ideas and to have time to find innovative solutions. Businesses should also invest in HR practices that lead to innovation such as training, sharing of information and in good quality jobs to increase engagement.
- Having a clear set of values and a purpose, make the business more resilient and increase employee’s wellbeing which is the fuel for business growth.
- Recognising and valuing people in the workplace leads to discretionary effort (the extra mile employees are willing to go because they are committed to their organisation).
- It is vital to create the conditions to get the workforce to do their best job as people are a business’s biggest asset.
- New ways of working give the opportunity to include more unutilised talent such as disabled people. For instance, one of our speakers Anthony Burns, COO at ACS Clothing talked about their recruiting process and how 16% of their workforce on site are registered as disabled and they are finding them to be the best committed staff who are really supporting the business growth.
According to case study speakers and experts, the above learnings can support organisations in shaping their new approaches to work. People are businesses biggest asset and increasing performance is essential to recognise their value, ensure a safe environment to create and innovate and to have a clear two-way communication. This is a starting point for management and leadership practices that will support business growth in the long-term.
For more information about Productivity Club Scotland’s upcoming events, please visit https://www.scdi.org.uk/events/
