Poor comms hold back productivity

The multinational report from Proudfoot Consulting suggests that manufacturing managers suffer from too much bureaucracy and red tape. More than 44% of them agreed that excessive bureaucracy and red tape prevented good ideas from being implemented at their companies. They also believe they’re spending too much time on admin, saying they spent just over two days a week pen pushing. These managers indicated their ideal workweek would devote no more than 28% of their time to administrative duties, the lowest level reported in any business sector surveyed. Manufacturers think their companies could potentially increase productivity by 13.5% over the next two years but expect their companies will only realise improvements of about 10% during the same period. That leaves almost 27% of potential productivity gains untapped, the report says, although this share of untapped productivity gains is the second lowest of any sector surveyed. Beyond the chart topping internal communication issues cited by 29% of manufacturing managers, staff shortages (cited by 27%), is the number two barrier to improved productivity. Looking to wards the coming 12 months, sector managers have a positive outlook: 19% think staff shortage issues will grow worse, while 29% think the situation will improve, yielding a net positive outlook of 10 points, slightly higher than the global norm. According to the findings, 64% of manufacturing sector managers reported their companies are planning to improve productivity over the next 12 months through initiatives focused on changing the culture of their companies. This level of planned culture change activity is highest of all sectors surveyed.