The Workplace Productivity Challenge - Summary - Department of ...

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summary of the report of the workplace productivity working group
To meet the objective the government set of advising on possible future policy options for lifting
workplace productivity, we undertook an extensive process that included:
• Ten meetings of the Working Group and meetings by the supporting officials.
• Engaging industry, business, unions and employees in formal and informal forums
and discussions.
• Reviewing key New Zealand and overseas research.
• Commissioning case study research into good workplace practice.
• Hosting a two-day workshop in Wellington to identify key issues, learn about best practice
examples and build consensus among key decision makers on some of the practical
solutions. Over 70 business leaders, union representatives, academics, officials and other
interested parties attended the workshop. Feedback from the sessions was compiled
into a Summary of Proceedings that we considered in reaching the recommendations
in this report. This summary was also made publicly available and provided to workshop
participants in June 2004.
• Holding seven focus groups (5-20 July 2004) in five locations around the country to further
test the workshop conclusions and to engage more broadly about the Working Group’s
thinking. A full copy of the focus group report can be found at the workplace productivity
website at www.dol.govt.nz/productivity.
Linkages to Existing Policies and Practices
Our terms of reference also required that existing policies and practices were taken into account. This
created natural links to existing advisory groups and required that we look at existing policy review
processes as part of our scope. Specifically, we set out to look at the following key issues:
• What we think are the most important drivers for achieving improvements in
workplace productivity.
• Consideration of available information on how New Zealand businesses are
currently performing.
• Possible barriers to improving New Zealand’s workplace productivity performance.
In light of our terms of reference we were not charged with addressing how broader economic and
public policy issues impacted on productivity in New Zealand firms but rather accepted them as
“givens”. For example:
• We did not consider the issue of low unemployment and the impact of key pieces of
legislation, such as the Holidays Act 2003, the Resource Management Act 1991 and the
Employment Relations Act 2000.
• Macroeconomic concerns about the need for increased capital investment are not addressed
in this report but we did consider issues about the quality and accessibility of capital.
• A wide range of commentators have identified the need to unblock infrastructure bottlenecks
in order to create an environment more favourable to business activity. Two areas where
bottlenecks are frequently cited are transport and electricity. While we recognise the
importance of having a sound infrastructure for overall productivity improvements, this was
not an area that we considered fell within our focus at firm level.