Australia’s productivity gap is greater now than a year ago, finds new research sponsored by Telstra.
According to Telstra, the most alarming figure of the report is what it calls the productivity gap: that difference between the number of organisations that have identified productivity as a priority (76 percent this year and 78 percent last year) and those that have a productivity targets and know what these are (42 percent this year and 49 percent last year).
“The report shows that organisations focused less on productivity during the economic downturn, even though the challenging conditions were a perfect opportunity to improve productivity by working more efficiently,” said Telstra Enterprise and Government group managing director, Nerida Caesar.
According to Telstra’s chief economist, Geoff Sims “Productivity is really important for living standards…They are under threat from climate change, population growth and an aging population.”
Other highlights of the Telstra report included:
- Improving customer service and productivity are the key priorities for Australian organisations, ranking 78 per cent and 76 per cent respectively
- ICT investment is seen as the most important contributor to improving the productivity of organisations with 55% of those surveyed identifying it as having contributed to productivity gains in the last 12 months
- Whilst organisations place a high priority on ICT investment, only 34% of organisations believe that ICT deployment is greatly aligned with the needs of worker groups to maximise their productivity. Those organisations that place greater importance on aligning ICT deployment with worker group needs are more likely to pursue productivity improvements
- The top five ICT investments for improving productivity focus on network-based capabilities including access, wide area networking, network coverage and speed, information and resource sharing and flexible/remote networking.
Telstra commissioned Sweeney Research to survey senior executives in 300 organisations each with more than 200 employees to compile the report.
