Productivity. Insights from the HR Roundtable.

Productivity in the Workplace

In a dynamic session at the recent Harvest Geelong HR Roundtable, expert presenter Chris Pepperall, Senior Director at Bevington Group, delved into the intricacies of productivity and the keys to boosting it within organisations. Under the spotlight of his presentation, titled “Power Up on Productivity,” here are some key takeaways:

Understanding Productivity

According to Bevington Group, productivity is defined as output versus cost, offering two avenues for improvement: increasing output or decreasing costs.

Chris stated that more than one-third of organisational effort is often expended on ‘waste’ activities, including both glaring inefficiencies such as working on rejects, complaints, delays or rework and more subtle, less apparent ones such as customer queries, telephone tag, email sorting and management, incomplete information, system workarounds and manual data duplication activities.

The Impact of Waste Reduction

Reducing ‘waste’ leads to employees engaging in more sustainable and engaging work, thus enhancing the overall employee experience.

Conversely, an increase in waste within an employee’s role can result in poor employee and customer experiences.

The Role of the Operating Model

An operating model encompasses roles, skills, structures, processes, assets, and technologies crucial for an organisation to deliver its products or services effectively.

Addressing waste often involves adjusting the organisation’s operating model, a complex task requiring consideration of all parts of the organisation.

Starting the Productivity Journey

So, where to start on the productivity uplift journey?

To initiate a productivity boost, organisations should listen to their teams to identify sources of frustration and inefficiency.

Regularly wear a ‘continuous improvement’ hat, questioning how to enhance processes during everyday work.

Prioritise the customer experience and evaluate whether systems, processes, and technology help or hinder the work being done.

Essentials for a Successful Productivity Transformation

The groundwork required to ensure success in a productivity transformation journey includes the need to:

• Focus on strategic importance and prioritise areas impacting organisational productivity or performance.
• Assess the operating model, quantify issues, and prioritise opportunities for productivity gains.
• Anticipate future levers and changes that will drive sustainable productivity improvement.
• Collaboratively determine and design changes with team members.
• Deploy changes incrementally, seeking quick wins and gradual benefits over time.

Navigating Noise Generators and Work Alignment

The session included a robust discussion on what noise generators there are from system breakdown, to significant enquiry from internal and external stakeholders, to non-value added activity and how these are addressed.

Other points touched on included:

• Overreliance on technical experts or the “key person” expert on a subject matter can lead to bottlenecks. Ensuring multiple points of dependencies is a better option.
• Overall, an employee’s work should align with an organisation’s purpose and mission. “Busyness” for the sake of busy is not a badge of honour and should be discouraged where it does not contribute to the larger vision.
• In a highly regulated environment, responsive and agile change management frameworks are crucial to implementing new work practices in response to evolving regulations and laws.

In this engaging session, Chris Pepperall shed light on the multifaceted world of productivity, emphasising the importance of waste reduction, employee engagement, and strategic alignment for organisations seeking to power up their productivity levels. We thank Chris for his invaluable presentation.

Thanks for attending the Harvest Geelong HR Roundtable, 6^th September 2023.

About Chris Pepperell

Chris has led improvement and change management programs covering tactical process change through to end-to-end strategic transformations. These assignments have involved front-of-house and back-of-house functions, office and field-based staff, offshore partners and third party providers. He is particularly skilled at constructing programs that deliver both early wins as well as longer-term strategic changes.

As an operating model design specialist, Chris applies top down and bottom up design approaches to develop models that can deliver an organisation’s strategy effectively. He has delivered a number of operating model assignments focusing on structure, role, process, technology, capability, culture and operating metrics.

His expertise includes: operating model design; process re-engineering; transformation governance and delivery; Agile delivery methodologies; change management; and knowledge transfer to build staff capability.

Chris works for Bevington Group. 

For more information on Productivity or the Geelong HR Roundtable, please contact Harvest.