So this is what Australia’s productivity debate has come to?
A week after it was announced the $52 billion Gorgon LNG project in Western Australia was a staggering $9 billion over budget, it has emerged the major contractors on the project have issued new rules designed to boost the productivity of workers and get costs back under control.
The key measure in the rules: no sitting down.
“Labour is not allowed to sit down during normal working hours, unless their duties require,” the rules say, according to a reports. “Chairs and benches are not allowed on site unless used for work. Labour is allowed to sit during normal working hours in the approved shade huts for short rest breaks and hydration.”
Breaches of “discipline” will see wages being docked.
It’s all a little draconian and quite frankly a little silly. But clearly there are some serious problems on this project and everyone is pretty fed up — although trying to blame everything on the “labour” (try calling your staff that today and see how far you get!) is pretty tough when you see this sort of thing coming down from management.
Will it improve productivity? No idea, but maybe. Will any potential productivity gains be erased by treating workers in this way? Pretty likely, I’d say.
To me, this incident again underlines the struggle that managers have around productivity — we all know that it needs to improve, but finding ways to measure it and then practically raise productivity is not easy.
The avalanche of reports and surveys and investigations that we have into productivity-related problems — and it has been frankly never-ending this year — help us identify problems, but do little to help managers find practical solutions.
What I would like to see is governments spend money developing productivity toolkits. These kits, which would have to be produced across a variety of industries and businesses sizes, would provide managers with practical tools to:
- Put in place systems and processes to measure and report on the productivity of their current workforce.
- Advice on to how to use these results to find productivity improvements. That is, real, practical measures which managers can employ at a variety of levels, such as day-to-day productivity boosts and short, medium and long-term productivity projects.
- Advice on how to engage staff and other stakeholders
This could be complemented with tailored consulting solutions for firms (who I am sure would be happy to meet subsidised costs) and in-depth training for managers.
We must find ways to take productivity out of the theoretical and into the practical. It is clear that our managers are not equipped with the tools to drive productivity improvements — so instead of whinging about them, let’s give them those tools.
*This article was originally published at SmartCompany
Toolkits, brilliant.
The first one should be for managers in learning how to manage, the number one killer for producivity in the country.
After all, if they can’t work that one out what the **** are they doing managing?
Is his another of those funny prank phone calls? This directive could only have come from a consultant,(maybe the Big G herself), being paid ten times the rate of the labourers it is meant for, who was sitting down when she/he made it. Yeah; that will save a couple of billion. Who is looking after the books on this job? Joe Hockey? Jethro?
Haha, crazy managers. Having been an employer before,I understand why they don’t want to allow sitting, some workers are lazy and sitting is bad temptation, I’ve known of people who ban chair before. But banning sitting is not the answer.
They need to organise and co-ordinate that so there is not a surplus or excess number of workers, and the workers need to know and find the job to do next to fill the time and don’t waste it.
A few months ago, I heard someone was warning that they might change the IR law and allow employers to sack workers who don’t perform the work adequately? Yer think not? Many small business owners work 60 hours a week so they can meet the exhobitant rent and they are obliged to keep the workers who sit around and twiddle their thumbs? There’s a limit on how long the employer should put up with and give the workers the chance to improve. If you want more productivity, or give inexperience workers like the youths to be given the chance to be employed you have to think of what it’s like to be in the employer’ shoe. If you want them to keep unproductive workers then tie the pay with productivity performance per hour and allow them to pay below award wage if the job perfomance is poor.
Hi Apollo, maybe the small business owners should pay a bit better and they’d get better workers? CEOs are always telling us that you have to pay them a fortune coz that’s how you get the best….but strangely that fixed law of the universe seems to reverse when its gets to the workers.
Another thing occurred to me while reading this article. This kind of cost blowout, 9 billion, if done by a government program, would be attracting screaming headlines from the usual media suspects claiming to be focused on waste etc and would then lead to a ‘whaddya expect’ series of articles about how the public sector can’t do things right etc etc. Where is the outrage in this case? And its not because taxpayers aren’t propping up these companies to the max with diesel rebates, watered down mining taxes etc- so how come these ‘private’ sector stuff ups are just mentioned with a passing eyebrow lift rather than the hysterics and stern lectures that a public enterprise would generate? Workers taking 11 minutes rather than 10 to reach the canteen etc did not cause this.