Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

What are the pros and cons in the drive for productivity?

Scott D. Smith

Scott D. Smith

CEO, Beyonics

In maximising productivity, every decision we make has to start and end with the customer in mind. This is what dictates cycle time improvement, automation, process optimization, everything we do as a manufacturing organisation. Driving productivity has clear advantages: It requires managers to understand deeply the segment of the market they are serving and listen carefully to customers. We need to understand their pain points, their mission, and use these insights to enhance our value proposition to ensure we have a win-win relationship. I don’t see many cons around the drive for productivity. The key is aligning the interests of our customers with those of employees. The lifeblood of an organisation is employees: It’s our role as leaders to ensure that everyone understands his or her role in delivering customer satisfaction. Instilling this kind of culture across the company is critical, because empowerment is the ultimate driver of productivity.

Kavita Gandhi

Executive Director - Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore

Raising productivity is a central tenet of any organization. Educating, informing and raising awareness among businesses about more efficient processes as well as infrastructure are key strategies in driving productivity. It helps the workforce understand how to lower operational costs through the adoption of more cost-effective and efficient solutions. A productivity drive led by training benefits staff in implementing the latest technologies and solutions better, enabling them to map and customise new solutions. Over the long term, it translates into cost savings. I would encourage managements to look beyond the dollars into the realm of longer-term tangible and intangible benefits. After all, enhanced productivity not only strengthens companies but also bolsters the competitiveness of the economy.

Ben Samman

MD - ASEAN, Jabra

The goal of productivity is, at its core, the desire to get more results with less inputs. Something that we should never lose sight of is the impact of this drive for productivity on people: customers, employees and their families. Keeping people at the centre of a productivity strategy makes it easy to identify places where productivity can be gained. In much the same way that the sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb, cloud computing) allows for better utilisation of assets, a people-centric productivity strategy focuses on reducing frictions in collaboration costs in both time and money. It also allows people the flexibility to spend more time with their loved ones, resulting in better morale, increased productivity and lower attrition.

Tan Kee Yong

MD, AsiaMalls Management

For any company to be successful, you need employees who are at their peak performance. To achieve this, companies tend to focus on implementing measures that aim to drive productivity. However, this often comes at the expense of proper execution, which may result in lowered staff morale or increased employee stress levels. Ultimately, the pros of driving for productivity can only be realised when management involves employee feedback in the implementation. After all, there needs to be two-way communication in ensuring that employee engagement strategies are factored into well-meaning practices. These strategies which are incorporated into much broader policies of promoting employee well-being and manager-employee positive relationships will hold greater promise to drive business results.

Wee Zihuan (Zwee)

CEO, & Founder, Eunoia

We are lucky to be in an era where there are new technological solutions every day, raising productivity by performing otherwise mundane tasks. These solutions can work at a faster pace than people, which means valuable time is freed up to do more. However, the drive to optimise processes needs to be carefully managed. Technology can resolve labour challenges but it can never replace staff. Rather, driving productivity through technology gives us a greater capacity to work on tasks that will generate results. For example, in the food and beverage industry, service staff can focus on the customer, providing a better experience if administrative processes such as taking orders and processing payments are left to technology.

Compiled by Rumi Hardasmalani

rumih [at] mediacorp.com.sg

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.