Now, I’m not one who normally shares policy documents with you, but I read this one and it stated me thinking about the implications of leadership in actively improving productive organizations.

The July 2014 CIPD manifesto championed a programme to improve working lives and jobs. It contained a thought- provoking analysis of efficiency and productivity in the United Kingdom’s economy after the GFC. The manifesto serves as a call to action to a newly elected government.

On my reading it, I thought it could have been written about New Zealand. In the G7, the Unites Kingdom is number 6 in productivity, and 13th globally. They have it easy. New Zealand is only about half as productive (GDP/person/hour), ranking at 28th in the world.

New Zealand is improving, but it still has a long way to go to catch up to other OECD countries.

Earlier this year, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said that New Zealand has a 27 percent productivity gap compared to other OECD countries. It reported that this was the case because international connections and “knowledge-based capital” hadn’t been invested in enough.

It also reported that the policy settings that New Zealand currently has should generate a GDP per capita 20% above the other OECD countries, but that it is actually 20% below average. This negatively affects the well being of New Zealanders and the overall well being of the entire country.

Now, to me, there is a very close relationship between leadership and productivity. Leaders focus on fixing things and making them work better. They also can worry less about “busyness” and the status quo. The government in the United Kingdom habitually intervenes more than our government here in New Zealand, but there are still some fascinating insights we can gain about leadership.

Want to improve your leadership impact?

Look at these insights from the report and apply what you can for out New Zealand context.

In order to build productivity and more complete use of skills, conduct a review of the job market and skills demanded currently and for the future in the UK. Address the overlying causes of lower pay and not just the symptoms. Advocate and develop policy to promote the creation of high-performance workplaces.

Rather than focusing on processes, focus on a long-term, people-oriented approach to governing corporations. This will enable greater change, empower the culture of UK organizations by diversifying gender in the top positions, and boost appreciation for and better reporting of how groups manage human capital data and narrative reporting.

Ensure that you people have the opportunities to succeed by increasing access to high-quality information about various careers, guidance and advice counselors, creating strong partnerships between business and educational organizations, and promoting SMEs in promoting high-quality apprenticeships, and ensuring the national education system incorporates curriculum that teaches enterprise.

Ensure that workers can prepare well for retirement by creating a framework for pensions that gives employers access to information, technology and support that will enable them to utilize automatic enrollment, maintain tax-free pensions, and offering support for the technology and the users.
Ensure that our welfare rewards system works by refining the Universal Credit incentives, which will help lower-income workers maintain their wealth, and by providing guidelines to employers, encouraging them to give more hours to employees.

Extend personal tax-free allowances in order to protect those with very low incomes, allowing those who work full time at minimum wage to be completely tax free, and match the minimum wage with the rate of inflation.
Keep our employment regulation approach flexible, providing businesses with the room to innovate while protecting employees. Also, we must change current laws to give all employees the right to written terms and conditions of employment, and zero-hours contracts employees the ability to have fixed hours after a year of work, and ban clauses of exclusivity in these contracts.

The report also had an excellent quote from Chief Economist Mark Beatson.

“We need, instead, to think about how we can encourage employers to be more ambitious and more demanding – to stay ahead of the competition. Second, we need to recognize that innovation is not just about big science, men in white coats and patenting. We need to recognize the importance of the workplace for continuous improvement and innovation. And, third, we need to challenge preconceptions about employment regulation. Claims that more – or less – regulation will transform the UK’s economic performance need to be scrutinized impartially.”