Published on the 18/03/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
While a new report into Australia’s productivity challenge makes scarcely a mention about technology, one of its authors has said that the NBN holds the key to unleashing immense productivity benefits…
A new report examining Australia’s productivity challenge describes the nation’s business leaders as being in “survival mode”. The report issued by the Trans-Tasman Business Circle in association with Newport Consulting notes that; “Australia and New Zealand now face serious productivity challenges and this is heightened with the ageing population.”
Noting that the rate of productivity improvements continues to taper, the report Australia’s Productivity Decline focuses on issues such as the need for a reduction in red tape and some way to rein in wages. The only mention of technology in the entire report is to note that; “Digitisation is another crucial component of the productivity debate. The issue represents a globally significant shift in the nature of some important business services – think cloud computing – as well as certain consumer markets and retailing.”
But Newport Consulting managing director David Hand told iStart that technology had been the major enabler of productivity arguably since the industrial revolution and he did not think “it has done its dash”.
He said that the report’s focus has been on governance and change management issues rather than on a more detailed discussion of how to lift productivity. Hand said however that the importance of workplace flexibility to productivity meant that technology would continue to play a major role.
The National Broadband Network would also play a huge role in delivering a new wave of productivity improvements he said. While Hand described the fibre to the home versus fibre to the node debate as a “red herring” for business which largely already had access to high speed internet, he said that; “where there are implications is in the working from home revolution. This will require a whole new world for workers”.
Hand said that once NBN-enabled telework became more widespread workers would be “negotiating for output”. He said this had enormous implications for productivity and for the empowerment of women workers. “The NBN will be an enormous enabler for that.”
“And each worker will be negotiating a fee for output rather than a fee for turning up. There will be an explosion of contracting with workers paid on the basis of the value of what is produced which is at the centre of the productivity story.”
