This is the Major Barrier to Labor Productivity Improvement

Embarking on a labor productivity growth program can be considered a huge task. But when you think of it, every successful organization is always changing the way it gets things done so that it can maximize effectiveness and efficiency. Technology by itself will not necessarily guarantee an increase in labor productivity. The key to productivity is people. The key to people is good leadership. This means that you cannot prescribe or impose productivity improvements on people. They have to be led and the changes had to be created by them. The majority of labor productivity initiatives fail because somebody in top management has said that the target increase is 30% without any consultation or discussion with the people concerned. It is no wonder that they fail.

Labor productivity improvement starts when people can see that their job can be made easier and they can participate and drive the changes. Their job performance will increase as they apply their creativity and their energy. The real motivation comes when people derive complete satisfaction from their job and they know that they are making a meaningful contribution to an overall goal. It is the job of the leader to make sure that every member of staff is aware of the parts of their contribution pays in the overall scheme of things. The job of the leader is to create this environment and to make sure that the people receive positive reinforcement on a regular basis.

You cannot expect any labor productivity improvement unless the people receive frequent positive reinforcement so that they know the importance of their tasks. If they don’t get involved they will not find any meaning in their work. Effectively, this will create a barrier to productivity improvement. Sometimes an unqualified person in a job or someone who has not been trained properly will create a situation where the person feels that they are being treated unfairly and their job just cannot be very important. Once people reach this situation is very hard to turn them around and make them productive.

Productivity improvement just doesn’t happen by itself. It has to be planned very carefully and the most critical area is the introduction of the concept. Effective leadership must be developed at every single level because this will have a profound effect on the motivation of the people. If they think that they have been given an ineffective leader, they will believe that the organization doesn’t care about them. After all, they reason, if we were really important we would be given a good leader! You could say then, the biggest impediment to labor productivity improvement is the quality of the leadership available within the organization