News: Performance Management
Survey: Training vital for improving workplace efficiency
01 November 2007
Inefficient use of labour is causing companies in the UK to waste almost a fifth of all working time, and skills and development training could be used to address this.
That is the conclusion of a new report by Proudfoot Consulting, which gathered data from nearly 2,500 business operational performance reviews carried out over the past four years.
Reasons for this inefficiency included inadequate workforce supervision, poor management planning and poor communication.
Proudfoot's chief operating officer, Simon Glynn, said: "In the UK there's an 18 per cent gap between what is achievable and what currently exists - even more in other countries.
"That adds up to a lot of unrealised financial value that could be reinvested in skills and development training or paid to shareholders through higher dividends, or both."
He said that firms need to raise the threshold at which wasted work time is tolerated.
"This report undoubtedly shows how value gets lost and how management could re-capture it by acting on the root causes identified," he claimed.
Respondents to the survey were asked to choose from the actions they thought would most improve company productivity. The top action chosen was "investment in workforce skills development and training".
