The productivity triad: HR, Finance and Operations
Business productivity in the UK is flatlining. With the nature of work shifting and a shortage of talent, organizations can no longer afford to think of people planning as the headcount line item in their yearly budget. In this video, we bring together leaders from a range of industries to discuss how a simple profit-per-worker strategy could add £10.4 billion to the UK’s GDP.
Recent research conducted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) on behalf of Orgvue shows that 86% of British businesses are concerned about raising their productivity.
Yet a third of organizations are investing less than £10,000 annually in understanding whether they have the right people with the right skills doing the right work.
Amid tough, disruptive market conditions, unlocking the goldmine of corporate data and using it to drive organizational and transformation is where the opportunity for better productivity lies for businesses today.
Linking people planning with productivity
This video presents highlights from a roundtable event we hosted at London’s NED hotel in November 2019.
Our CEO, Rupert Morrison was joined by change expert and business advisor, Campbell Macpherson, alongside business and organizational design leaders from several large organizations to discuss:
- The crucial link between strategic workforce planning and productivity
- How breaking down silos between HR, Finance, and Operations can free up organizations and drive business growth
- How data can help ensure British businesses be prepared for all eventualities…and net a slice of a potential £10.4 billion rise in the UK’s GDP
“People are both the largest cost and biggest value creator for almost all organisations. Our analysis has shown that whilst businesses clearly understand overall productivity, when it comes to profit per worker there is a significant informational deficit.”
Kay Neufeld, head of macroeconomics, CEBR
For more on the CEBR research findings, see our Connect people to profit infographic
Transcript
Rupert Morrison, Orgvue: Today, we have a group of practitioners from industry, from industry bodies, from think tanks, all trying to uncover how to get a 2-fold increase in productivity from organizational planning.
Pablo Shah, CEBR: Do you think you collaborate enough? There’s a quite a broad consensus that there’s isn’t enough collaboration and I think that’s echoed across the table.
Andres Garcia, RSA: I need to get even better at understanding the strategy, because that’s the link for both functions [HR and Finance].
Rupert Morrison, Orgvue: What was interesting is how the journalists picked up on the storytelling side of the discussion, and how the practitioners picked up on, “it’s a journey”.
Laurie Mascott, Orgvue: Along that journey, you have to keep adding value all the way through.
Tim Henshaw, Accenture: You therefore need to create and set the environment, so that becomes the norm rather than a nice-to-have that we serve up once a month.
Rupert Morrison, Orgvue: My main takeaway from today is Tesco saying, “this is not every month or every quarter, we’re always on, we always show it, it’s just live. So, it’s about action, it’s about progress. It’s also about wisdom; how am I learning and seeing patterns, so I don’t make the same mistakes.
Campbell Macpherson, business advisor: How do you actually go about a. getting the data and b. making it systemic
Ashley Norris, journalist: Again, your data really is only as good as how it’s communicated.
Rupert Morrison, Orgvue: And by unlocking that and building that function with a dataset, you can get to a 2-fold increase in productivity.