Everything stays the same

Citation

(2009), "Everything stays the same", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 58 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijppm.2009.07958eab.004

Everything stays the same

Article Type: News From: International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Volume 58, Issue 5

A new pay system for more than a million National Health Service (NHS) staff in the UK has failed to deliver promised rises in productivity, says the National Audit Office (NAO).

“Agenda for Change” aimed to bring in a single pay scheme for most NHS staff, alongside schemes boosting staff training and development.

The NAO said many trusts (the organisational units of the NHS) had failed to improve training, and there was no evidence of better working.

The introduction of Agenda for Change was a mammoth undertaking, with the jobs of every member of staff reassessed and placed on the appropriate point on the pay scale.

The single biggest group to be included was nursing staff, making up some 40 per cent of the total pay bill.

We have the information too

The Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union recently used productivity figures to show that unionised Canadian plants were the most productive in the Americas.

CAW factories have been the most efficient of all union and non-union assembly plants in Canada, the USA and Mexico since 1998, according to an analysis by the union’s economist, Jim Stanford, of data in the annual Harbour Report, a closely watched annual study of auto industry productivity.

“These are not data that we gathered, we’re just analyzing stuff that is already out there,” Mr Stanford said in an interview.

Using the Harbour Report’s measure of hours needed to assemble a vehicle, he found that CAW plants took, on average, 20.36 hours to assemble a vehicle in 2007, compared with 21.66 hours for Japanese-owned plants in Canada, 22.06 hours for unionized US plants and 24.06 hours for Detroit Three plants in Mexico. Non-union US plants and plants in Mexico operated by Asia- and Europe-based companies rounded out the list.

All over the world

Global productivity growth slowed to 2.3 per cent in 2008 from 3.7 per cent in 2007, the Conference Board announced. The group sees productivity growth slowing further to 1.8 per cent this year, which would be the weakest since 2001. Europe suffered a particularly dramatic slowdown in productivity growth, to 0.2 per cent in 2008 from 1.3 per cent in 2007, with many European firms slow to reduce headcount in response to falling output, it said. China’s productivity growth fell from 12.1 to 7.7 per cent as a result of a drop in exports and investment. US productivity edged up to 1.7 per cent from 1.5 per cent after large job cuts.

A little help from a friend

The work of the Jamaica Productivity Centre (JPC) is expected to be enhanced over the next two years with the attachment of a Japanese productivity consultant.

Makato Oyama was recently introduced to public and private sector leaders at a breakfast meeting at which State Minister in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security Andrew Gallimore welcomed Oyama to Jamaica and thanked the Japan International Cooperation Agency for its support in this endeavour.

JPC Chairman Joseph A. Matalon revealed that Oyama, who is a product improvement specialist with more than 30 years experience in his field, will be working alongside senior productivity specialist in the Technical Advisory Servcies Unit where he will be advising a number of public and private sector organisations of ways in which they can improve productivity.