Productivity Blog

Via The Dallas Morning News By JIM PAWLAK / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News Instant Turnaround Harry Paul and Ross Beck (William Morrow, $22.99) “Instant” may be overstating the case because management must change its decades-old view of employees as expendable assets and build through trust, not fear. Building trust takes time. The authors point out that managing strictly by the numbers makes the numbers more important than … Continue reading →

by Bob Jacobson, APS Chairman All too often there is too much information from too many sources to go through, but the two best sources for competitiveness information by country come from the World Economic Forum in Switzerland http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Competitiveness%20Report/index.htm and the National Competitiveness Report by the Institute for Industrial Policy Studies at Seoul National University http://www.ips.or.kr/site/IPS_english/research/download/NCR2009_01_e.pdf If you are trying to determine where in the world you might want to … Continue reading →

Via The Wall Street Journal By Liu Li BEIJING — Manufacturing activity in China declined in March for the eighth consecutive month as prices and new orders continued to weaken, according to the CLSA China Purchasing Managers Index issued Wednesday. The index, a gauge of nationwide manufacturing activity, fell to 44.8 in March from 45.1 in February, CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets said. The data, the first broad economic indicator published for … Continue reading →

Via Gulf News By Suzanne Fenton, Staff Reporter Dubai: Senior officials have said Dubai must focus more on capital-intensive business practices rather than depend on foreign labour in order to become more competitive in global markets. Dubai was ranked 16th out of 65 global economies in the National Competitiveness Report for 2009 – the first time the emirate has featured in the eight-year-old report. The report is published annually by … Continue reading →

Via The New York Times By SARA RIMER BY the time I started looking for someone to help me organize my home office, where I work when I’m not out reporting stories, it was not a pretty sight: notebooks, papers, bills, cellphone chargers, books, digital cameras and tape recorders, batteries, stamps, magazines, Sweet’n Low and Splenda packets (where did they come from?) were piling up on my desk, the floor … Continue reading →

Via Ventura County Star By Diane Stafford, McClatchy Newspapers Does it matter if workers are happy? Only if an organization wants to do well. One academic study found that managers with average salaries of about $65,000 cost their organizations roughly $75 a week per person in lost productivity if they are “psychologically distressed.” Multiply that at large businesses, and the financial whammy is big. Research shows that employee well-being is … Continue reading →

Via Business Week How companies can deploy managers to fight waning employee productivity By The Staff of the Corporate Executive Board The magnitude of the economic downturn for mid-sized organizations has been significant. Profits are down, workforces are shrinking, and employee engagement levels are tanking. According to new research by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), there has been a substantial decline in employee engagement, resulting in as much as a … Continue reading →

Can you imagine if this is happening in America with just one sports tournament and if this is indeed true, what the costs would be if you added costs from Soccer, Rugby, Australian Rules Football, and so on and so forth. The cots are astronomical!!! … Bob Jacobson Via Slate by Jack Shafer The NCAA Tournament gets under way on Thursday, and it’s reportedly luring diligent workers away from their … Continue reading →

Via Workers Independent News Economic Report: When it comes to economic competitiveness Utah ranks number one out of all fifty states. In an index created by the American Legislative Exchange Council Colorado, Arizona, Virginia, and South Dakota all join their fellow Western state in the top five. At the bottom are the northeastern states of New Jersey, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont and New York. Utah closed a $1 billion budget … Continue reading →

via The Kansas City Star By DIANE STAFFORD Nancy Hart Kline, counselor at Leawood Middle School, sent letters to 63 companies and professional associations, asking them to participate in an educational career fair at the school. She heard back with a “yes” from two. One of them was her own Blue Valley School District. Deborah Goodall, interim president of the Metropolitan Community College-Business & Technology Campus, hoped to have a … Continue reading →