Productivity and Competitiveness

• Raising productivity enables businesses to produce more output with the same level of resources.
• Higher productivity leads to lower costs, enabling businesses to offer lower prices than competitors.
• Increased competitiveness can win more customers, increase market share and threaten rivals.
• Improving productivity in a specific country can boost national exports and economic performance.
• A nation's standard of living can be improved through increased national productivity.
• Exchange rates can impact the price of exports, which can affect competitiveness of goods sold abroad.
• Businesses want to improve productivity due to the link between productivity and competitiveness.
• Improving labor productivity can be achieved through multiple approaches

Increase Specialization

• Worker performance and daily output are likely to improve with increased specialization.
• Workplaces can reorganize practices to allow for more effective specialization.
• Breaking down production into specific tasks allows workers to focus, becoming more expert and quick.

Improve Motivation

• Financial methods to improve motivations: piece rates, performance-related pay, profit-related pay, and bonuses.
• Non-financial methods of motivation: job enrichment, improve the working environment, empowerment, delegation, and teamwork.

Improve Training

• Investing in training is expensive, but improves productivity and staff motivation.
• Customer service training can improve productivity, which might be overlooked by businesses.
• Retaining existing customers is cheaper than attracting new ones.
• Benefits of customer service include customer retention, fewer complaints and happier customer-facing employees.

Increase Labour Flexibility

• Job rotation makes workers more flexible.
• Supermarket employees can be trained in different tasks, adapting to customer flows.

Improve Service and Maintenance

• Machinery is more productive if serviced regularly and maintained effectively.
• Businesses may overlook regular servicing, thinking machines work well until they break down.
• With regular servicing the machinery is less likely to breakdown and will operate more efficiently.
• Machinery breakdowns can be very expensive, stopping production for a period of time.

Update and Replace Old Technology

• Regularly updating obsolete plant and machinery can improve productivity.
• Newer versions of functioning machines are more effective due to technology advances.
• Businesses should renew worn out and poor performing plant and machinery.
• Capital equipment becomes less reliable and likely to break down over time, holding up production.

Ensure Operatives Are Well Trained

• Thorough training in the uses of capital improves capital productivity.
• Training helps operatives understand how to work safely with plant and machinery to maximize efficiency.
• Inadequately trained operatives are less likely to get the most out of machines and may be a danger to themself and colleagues.