BuddeBlog

Telstra Productivity Indicator 2010

This year’s Telstra Productivity Indicator survey – conducted by Sweeney Research found that Australia’s ‘productivity gap’, the difference between productivity expectations and action, has widened from 29% in 2009 to 34% this year.

This is the second consecutive year that Telstra has conducted research on productivity, producing The Telstra Productivity Indicator: A report on attitudes and behaviours toward improving productivity in Australia.

The study supports the findings of the Australian Government’s third Intergenerational Report, which warned that falling productivity could see long term economic growth fall to 2.7% over the next 40 years, compared with a historic average of 3.3%.

According to Telstra, the report shows that organisations focused less on productivity during the economic downturn, even though the challenging conditions were a perfect opportunity to improve productivity by working more efficiently.

The Telstra Productivity Indicator 2010 report examines attitudes and behaviours to productivity in large enterprise and government organisations and explores the link between information and communications technology (ICT) and improving productivity.

The new research found:

While 76% of organisations consider productivity to be important, only 22% of decision makers feel that they can measure productivity benefits accurately, compared to 30% the year before;
Improving customer service and productivity are the key priorities for Australian organisations, ranking 78% and 76% respectively;
Investment in ICT continues to be a priority, with 62% rating it as extremely high or high (compared to 61% in last year’s report);
Around half of the respondents surveyed indicated that ICT has made a large productivity improvement to their organisation over the past few years. Technologies included improved networks, higher speed and broadband coverage, as well as networking solutions;
70% of organisations stated that, technologies that they expect to improve productivity in the next 12 months include common video sharing, mobile application platforms, data storage consolidation, network hosting and cloud computing

Productivity gains could be achieved only through a systematic and targeted approach to address the issue. Last year the productivity gap widened, as organisations were influenced by a number of external factors, such as a shift in consumer confidence, contraction in demand for some products and services, and uncertainty on the duration and severity of the global downturn.

The next 12 months presents significant opportunities for organisations to better manage, measure and invest in productivity improvements. To do this, they require clear management, improved measurement tools and strategic investment in ICT. Businesses that have a clear execution plan will be in a stronger and more competitive position for the year ahead.

According to Telstra’s report, in order to address the productivity gap, organisations must:

Have clear ownership and disciplined management of productivity
Implement measurement tools to quantify and qualify productivity gains
Invest in ICT to enable information to be more accessible, relevant and timely for customers and staff at the individual, worker group and organisational level
Incorporate these management, measurement and ICT investment strategies into a clear execution plan.

In addition, organisations that assign responsibility for productivity to specific individuals or teams are more likely to execute productivity improvement programs and measure its effectiveness. However, according to the report, in many cases, productivity is seen as a whole of organisation issue. Similarly, while organisations place a high priority on ICT investment to improve productivity, only 34% believe that ICT deployment is greatly aligned with the needs of employees to maximise their productivity.

The full report can be downloaded at:www.telstra.com/productivity