German University in Cairo
Master of Business Administration Department
ABSK 901 - T01
Reporting on Graphs
Submitted on: 29 May 2021
Member Name
Member ID
Arwa Salem
S2100578
Instructor: Naglaa Abdel-Wahed Mohamed
Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 2
Body ................................................................................................................................................ 2
What is Productivity? .................................................................................................................. 2
How to Improve Productivity? .................................................................................................... 3
What is Labor Productivity? ....................................................................................................... 3
Factors of low productivity ......................................................................................................... 3
Ways to Improve Employee Productivity ................................................................................... 4
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 4
1
Introduction
Companies now adays are seeking new ways to improve their operations in order to keep up and
exceed their competitors. This is called having a competitive advantage, which have become
necessary due to the high rate of competitiveness in current market. There are many ways to
achieve a competitive advantage, one of the most common ways is to improve productivity. There
are many different types of productivity like capital productivity, materials productivity, and labor
productivity. This report will explain productivity and specially focus on employee productivity.
Factors affecting employee productivity negatively and positively will also be discussed.
Body
What is Productivity?
(International Labour Organization, 2015) defined productivity as the effective use of creativity
and resources to increase value of outputs (goods and services). In other words, productivity is
increasing the output (quantity) without lower the standards (quality) while utilizing resources
(efficiency). This can be seen in Graph 1.
Graph 1: Venn Diagram of Productivity.
2
How to Improve Productivity?
There are two ways to increase productivity according to (International Labour Organization,
2015), and they are:
• Increasing the output without any change in the input.
• Decreasing the input without any change in the output.
What is Labor Productivity?
Labor productivity is defined as the total volume of output produced per unit of labor as defined
by (International Labour Organization, 2020).
Factors of Low Productivity
There are multiple factors causing law productivity. (The Sunday Times, 2002) published a survey
that was performed on 1,300 companies in 7 countries to find out the main causes of low employee
productivity. Graph 2 is a pie chart that represents the causes of low employee productivity, highest
cause is insufficient planning and controlling with 43%, then followed by inadequate management
with 23%, then poor working morale with 12%, then IT related issues with 8%, then ineffective
communication with 7% and finally unqualified workers with 7%. The graph shows that the
majority of causes of low employee productivity is due to lack of managerial leadership skills, it
is demonstrated in the lack of planning, inadequate management and poor working morale. This
infers that management has the biggest impact on employees’ productivity.
3
Causes of Low Employee Productivity
Insufficient Planning
and Control
7%
7%
Inadequate
Management
8%
43%
Poor Working Morale
IT Related Problems
12%
Ineffective
Communications
23%
Unqualified Workers
Graph 2: Pie Chart of Causes of Low Productivity.
Ways to Improve Employee Productivity
(International Labour Organization, 2015) mentioned many ways to improve employee
productivity and they are:

Wages and financial incentives

Job security and workplace safety

Teams and teamwork

Performance appraisal and rewards

Training and development
Conclusion
Productivity is an important metric for all businesses and improving it provides a huge competitive
advantage. Employee productivity is one of the types of productivity and it is defined as output
produced by one labor unit. There are many factors that can reduce employee productivity like
lack of planning, inadequate management, and poor working morale. On the other hand, there are
ways to improve employees’ productivity like financial incentives, teams work and training and
development.
4
References
International Labour Organization. (2015). Improve Your Business: People and Productivity.
International Labour Organization.
International Labour Organization. (2020). Statistics on labour productivity. Retrieved from
https://ilostat.ilo.org/topics/labour-productivity/
The Sunday Times. (2002, 10 6). CAUSES OF LOW PRODUCTIVITY. The Sunday Times.
5