Over the last 15 years, the global economy has struggled with low productivity growth caused by businesses working harder, instead of smarter. This trend has harmed employees’ quality of life and wellbeing.
CIMA's Research & Development and Advocacy teams conducted international research reports on productivity exclusively under CIMA® due to their advocacy efforts with the local government in the United Kingdom.
The Best Policies and Practices in Productivity research began in 2023 with the 1.0 series, which aimed to uncover productivity innovations globally. Productivity Lessons Learnt from the World — Best Business Practices, part of the 2.0 series published in 2024, highlights participant experiences from Australia, Singapore, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, and the United Kingdom regarding business productivity.
Enhancing your organisation’s productivity involves analysing and identifying the primary factors that drive productivity and potential barriers that may hinder it. Additionally, it’s crucial to pinpoint the best productivity practices that align with your organisation’s goals and objectives, which the report covers.
Cultivating collaborative cultures for consistent success
According to the research, companies can significantly improve their productivity by promoting trust, inclusion, and best productivity practices. Finance professionals revealed that looking beyond the surface of data-driven metrics and embracing technology and collaborative efforts with customers, suppliers, and partners are critical priorities for achieving their goals.
‘The report can help colleagues in finance because it summarises the lived experience of leaders who enabled people to create a seamless experience and productivity optimisations,’ said Irena Teneva, Associate Technical Director, Research and Development — Management Accounting, AICPA® & CIMA®, and author of Productivity Lessons Learnt from the World — Best Business Practices.
‘Most importantly, you can only improve productivity if you transform your organisation. It’s not simply about trying a patchwork of initiatives; otherwise, you’ll discover that you improve productivity in one area at the expense of another.’
Factors that stifle productivity
Several counterproductive factors hindering productivity were identified in the report. Finance leaders listed toxic culture, system fragmentation, excessive IT applications and systems, lack of expertise, and cumbersome administrative processes as productivity barriers.
Addressing these barriers is an essential step towards positive organisational transformation according to the report.
‘Those barriers to productivity are a mirror image of what drives productivity. To improve productivity, you have to transform the way you do your business or the way you run your organisation — transformations are not easy. You have to plan and execute them carefully,’ said Teneva.
Strategies for building superior workplace productivity
The report outlines three productivity best practices — including the use of digital and artificial intelligence (AI), upskilling and reskilling, and co-creating — to help overcome barriers.
Finance leaders agreed that using digitalisation to boost productivity is a top goal for businesses, even though it can be hard to manage, deploy, and communicate digital initiatives, which makes using new technologies seem less effective. However, comments also indicated that this era of digitisation will be substantially different with AI innovations.
Productivity requires reskilling and upskilling, along with AI and digital transformations. AI won’t replace people; instead, it will help them learn new skills faster so they can use them in the future of finance. Management should focus on improving current workers’ skills so people of all job titles can participate and shift from ‘training to promote to training to hire mentality’.
Organisations should co-create with workers and customers, offer flexible work schedules, and prioritise employee health and happiness to promote better productivity. The report shows that feedback from focus groups, staff surveys, and questionnaires is beneficial only if employees enjoy psychological safety. By fostering cultures that welcome new ideas, take risks, and learn from errors, finance leaders and employees can improve workplace productivity.
‘The three [best practices] for improving productivity are not isolated approaches — they usually overlap. The report lists nine tips for organisations embarking on AI transformations and mentions how finance leaders are capable of building capacity, skilling, reskilling, and upskilling,’ said Teneva.
‘Co-creating products with your customers or co-creating a positive culture in your organisation, working together with your suppliers, your partners, and sometimes even with your competitors — particularly about
sustainability — are critical productivity strategies covered in the report.’
Read the complete Productivity Lessons Learnt from the World — Best Business Practices report to learn the critical role financial leaders and professionals play in transforming businesses with productivity optimisations.