Improving the awareness and implementation of good people management practices is the missing x factor in improving the UK's productivity performance according to John Philpott, Chief Economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Philpott's comments come ahead of Michael Porter's government sponsored assessment of UK competitiveness and productivity levels, which is due to be made public on Wednesday, 22 January 2003.
Philpott says, A CIPD survey Voices from the Boardroom 2002, shows that only 13 of 48 board members interviewed about their views on HR are aware of the evidence that links people management practices with improved bottom line performance or that people management practices have a bigger impact on the bottom line than R&D.
From its own analyses and research, CIPD highlights four types of implementation problem that bedevil attempts to improve the performance of UK organisations:
Ignorance - despite the best efforts of management gurus and economists, too many senior UK managers remain oblivious of research and best practice initiatives demonstrating the links between good management practice and organisational success;
Inertia - even where the need for change is recognised, management is often reluctant, for both cultural and financial reasons, to make necessary organisational changes;
Inadequacy - where change is pursued, the change process is too often poorly implemented, with human resource initiatives not properly integrated with line management;
Integration - the change process often fails to recognise the need for stepwise change throughout organisations encompassing improvement in the use of technology, corporate structures, financial arrangements, and the management of people. Acting on one of these aspects of an organisation without corresponding change on all can hinder rather than help the shift toward high performance.
Philpott continues, Michael Porter's timely contribution should help raise the quality of public debate on the organisational and practice dimension of the UK's productivity problem. But beyond this the time has come for a 'do tank' rather than 'think tank' approach to UK management.
Fewer than 1 in 5 UK organisations implement the kind of high performance work practices such as flat structures or autonomous team-working that have enabled the US to surge well ahead in the productivity stakes since the mid-1990s. This is despite constant rhetoric from within both business and government on the need to raise the UK's productivity game.
Alongside much needed improvement in capital investment and skills training, far greater effort must be made to improve the way in which UK organisations are structured and, in particular, the way in which they manage and develop people.
If Professor Porter can demonstrate how this change process can be implemented, as well as highlighting how much it is needed, his efforts will themselves prove highly effective.
CIPD urges Porter to tackle the 'Implementation Gap' in UK management
.
