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

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summary of the report of the workplace productivity working group
Meeting the Workplace Productivity Challenge
This summary report seeks to identify the challenge that New Zealand faces in raising our quality of
life through improved workplace productivity and identifies some practical actions for encouraging
greater workplace productivity.
The work conducted to meet the objectives of this project was accomplished within a rather ambitious
time frame. We feel that we have been successful in meeting our goals but acknowledge that, given
more time, the breadth and depth of our background research would have been expanded.
Findings and Recommendations
Our findings and recommendations set out a Workplace Productivity Agenda for responding to the
workplace productivity challenge.
The Agenda will contribute to the government’s overall economic goals and complements existing
work programmes and strategies.
A key component of the Agenda is the shared responsibility for action among industry, firms, unions,
employees and government.
We recommend the establishment of a successor body to oversee the implementation of the
recommendations in this report.
As part of its findings, the Working Group identified seven complementary and reinforcing drivers of
productivity, listed below, that form the basis for our recommendations. These are:
• Building Leadership and Management.
• Creating Productive Workplace Cultures.
• Encouraging Innovation and the Use of Technology.
• Investing in People and Skills.
• Organising Work.
• Networking and Collaboration.
• Measuring What Matters.
We have grouped our recommendations around the following four types of actions:
• Raising Awareness – of what workplace productivity means and the actions that can lead
to improvements.
• Diagnostic Tools – to assist firms in identifying how effectively they are performing and to
identify where the firm may need to improve its business practices or performance.
• Implementation – assistance and support for firms to decide what specific actions to take
and the best way to put these in place.
• Research and Evaluation – collecting and developing the knowledge base about workplace
productivity and what business practices are successful.