The Managers’ effects in Productivity
How to improve it
Context
During the last months economics new in the UK keep mentioning that productivity is stagnant in the national companies since 2008. Among different reason I keep seeing appearing the role of the Managers (among others).
Such as here and here. The ideas goes in line with “accidental” managers and the possibility of lower management skills or support in small companies.
Solutions
Well rather than focus of the problems but in the potential interventions in Scur et al. 2021
As in above figure authors summarise their findings in that table. They divide the policies between Structural and Direct. Direct is related to direct support to managers and leaders while structural is more base at a country level or legislation.
As you can see in Figure 1: areCompetition, Trade, Education, Labour regulation and Governance. The latest refers to governance of the firms, such as if the firm has to provide plans for the next 3 or 5 years and so on.
For the direct (those of interest here) there are:
a) Training — Consulting. This refers to a group of consultant supporting the internal managers. This approach could be more tailored.
b) Training — formal Classroom. Here the manager are taking to a classroom. This approach probably more generic and cheaper.
c) Information / benchmarking. For examples sharing information of other groups or rival companies practices.
To sum up
So the solutions goes to further support the manager to actually understand better how they can help their team more productive with updated techniques.
Next steps
If curious about how the above can be measure I will suggest to see Scur et al. 2021 and see the questions for a quick evaluation of your case.