Returning power to the people

Victoria Petkovic-Short, Account Director, Apt Marketing & PR

of a team within an autonomous cell that is constantly striving for improvements, the impact on productivity can be significant.

The big miss in manufacturing is jumping into automation without investing in employee training to get the best out of the equipment, such as autonomous maintenance.

Automation is right for a point in time of the operations evolution, but not the beginning. We have four core work streams: culture development, global supply chain, customer satisfaction and operational excellence.

The link between people and productivity is obvious. As a fastgrowing company, our challenge is to maintain our valued small company culture and high level of customer satisfaction while introducing ways of working necessary for increasing scale.

Our ventures in China, Brazil and India were established in the last five years, and the development of an integrated, agile, global supply chain is key to our future productivity.

Deployed correctly, productivity through aligned strategies and investment in people will increase employee engagement by empowering them to drive improvements.

In other words, changing the way the business and its leaders work is the way to drive productivity.

In the world of marketing and PR, our deadlines can be agile and our responsibilities last minute, so we are adept at juggling multiple tasks.

It is exciting, fast-paced and addictive and our team loves what they do. But working in this environment, there are some productivity challenges.

For us, it came from an invisible ‘split’ between the Senior Management Team (SMT) and our executives.

We have a flat organisational structure and encourage initiative, hunger and drive. However, the big game changer for us, identified through coaching on the QuoLux LEAD course, was realising that our short-term deadlines had created a certain “hero” leadership (not a term I like or have coined).

Hero leadership occurs where, in a bid to ensure we always deliver for a client, the SMT stepped in and “rescued” situations and workloads. It meant much of our training and development in these scenarios was redundant; our team was learning by being told and not by doing in order to meet short deadlines. Secondary to this, the situation enabled instances of ‘no consequence’: if your line manager redoes the work in the event of poor quality or non-delivery, what incentive is there for you to do it right?

We are a good employer and invest in our team, but in trying to be supportive, we had also created a sometimes non-productive environment. Rework was high, though in theory it needn’t be, and our team’s creativity was somewhat on a leash.

All it took was a few small changes to make a significant and lasting difference. By recognising (through LEAD) the changes we needed to make, the team are now working autonomously. We have created space for them to rework it themselves in instances where they are off-brief, and all of this has been done without compromising quality and delivery. Overall, we have reduced rework by around 60 per cent — that’s almost two hours per person per day. It is amazing how much more productive, happy and engaged we are as a team, even though we seemed to be in the first place.

One challenge was the friction always caused when you change something after a long time. It is hard going from doing something one way to doing it another, and I am sure the team felt the effects of having work returned to them when previously it would have been done. It only took a couple of weeks though.

The best thing about improving our productivity has been watching the younger team flourish.

It is important for all businesses to understand that they can make small improvements. Every business, large or small, whether they are winning “best employer” awards or not, has the capacity to do everything a little bit better. It is this constant reflection, evolution and commitment to innovation that truly makes a business thrive and there are always things we can improve, no matter how good we were when we started.

Why the UK falls behind other developed economies – the productivity gap – is still somewhat of a mystery.

It’s easy to blame the country’s economy, but businesses can, and need to, address productivity at a company level. Evidence indicates the value of good leadership and structured management practices in helping to raise productivity.

Interestingly, the productivity of an engaged workforce compared to a disengaged workforce is 18 per cent higher. But with the same research stating that 79 per cent of workers, a whopping 20 million people, are disengaged, a cultural revolution is needed. Perhaps this provides a second pointer to leaders to create conditions in the workplace to engage staff more.

By supporting leaders and managers to develop the skills they need to enhance employee engagement, businesses can make significant improvements in productivity. We’ve seen this first-hand – delegates demonstrate a 42 per cent increase in productivity after completing our LEAD programme. It is possible to close the gap.

The UK falls 35 per cent behind Germany in terms of productivity. Benchmarking sales per employee throws up some interesting statistics. In the UK, average output per person is £147,000. How does that compare against your company’s performance? In Germany, the output per person soars to £335,000.

Measuring against similar companies in Germany provides an insight into how many millions of pounds of profit can be generated by small and medium-sized enterprises without recruiting more people. A 10-person service firm can increase sales by almost £3 million and profits by £2 million. A 25-person firm can increase sales by almost £5 million without employing anyone else. Corporation tax generated from more productive SMEs could raise £75 billion per annum, enough to pay for almost three quarters of the annual NHS budget.

Business can be a force for good, making a difference to society by becoming more productive. So, what will you do differently to help solve the productivity puzzle?