The Productivity Gap?

Is the productivity gap due to people or process?

The government has talked a lot about improving the productivity gap of UK business and their rhetoric seems to focus on staff and individuals not working hard enough.

However, in our experience people come to work to do their best and it is the systems and processes that hamper their ability to get more done in the time available, thus limiting their productivity.

ChangeWise has developed an operational assessment approach that quickly identifies the key factors that enable an efficient and effective operation. Whether they are admin support teams, shared service centres, back office operations, customer contact centres or manufacturing plants they all have similarities that enable success.

For instance, they all have:

• direct or indirect interaction with customers
• customer demands and capacity constraints
• processes and procedure to follow,
• supporting roles or a dependence on others
• skills, capability and training needs
• communication and measurement challenges
• quality, controls and risks associated with their work
• management goals and performance targets
• workplaces organised to deliver a product or service

Understanding the enablers that make an operation effective, and thus productive, is key to identifying where improvements can be made to liberate staff from the shackles of poor systems and processes.

ChangeWise can provide insights and opportunities for improving your business through a short site visit where we walk the process, interview the managers, Team Leaders and support staff then observe the processes in operation or listen to customer calls. From this we can give you feedback to show where your business sits compared to best-in-class operations that have been using Lean, Operational Excellence and Customer Service Excellence methodologies to continuously improve their businesses over many years.

Mike Williams says ‘I have just completed an operational review of a contact centre for a bank in Ireland. The insights have helped them identify significant opportunities to improve their internal performance and the performance of the rest of the bank. By working with us to focus on key areas like reducing avoidable demand, improving first point resolution and using techniques to fix the root cause of errors and customer complaints they can become better at problem solving and start the journey to continuous improvement.’