As the world of business becomes increasingly based on intangibles, surely the way we talk about productivity needs to shift too, rather than harking back to a bygone industrial age. And in the words of Paul Kearns, chair of the Maturity Institute and measurement expert, “management has failed to account for the value of people in the productivity equation”.

We need to improve how we measure the value-add of inputs into a more knowledge-based economy. And this means viewing productivity through a different lens — one that takes into account the value of people and what they bring to an organisation, beyond being cogs in a production line.

The way we talk about productivity needs to shift to suit a knowledge economy