Welcome to National Productivity Week — an initiative to raise awareness of the importance of productivity and its impact on the economy, society & the environment — hosted by The Productivity Institute and supported by the Bennett Institute and other UK institutions, business organisations and think tanks.
A week-long series of events, seminars, conferences and panel discussions has been launched to raise awareness of and offer solutions to addressing the UK’s productivity challenges.
National Productivity Week has been organised by The Productivity Institute, a public-funded research body headquartered at the University of Manchester. It will run from Monday 27 November to Friday 1 December and bring together academia, business leaders, policymakers and think tanks to share insights and provide solutions for tackling productivity slowdown in the UK.
The week’s events will cover a range of topics including productivity’s impact on businesses and individuals, regional productivity disparities, the roles and responsibilities of universities, policy formulation, best-practice management skills and working practices, and technology.
Eight of the UK’s leading universities (Cardiff, Cambridge, King’s College London, Warwick, Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow and Queen’s University Belfast), as well as Be the Business, CIMA and the Institute for Government are working alongside The Productivity Institute to run the events.
As part of National Productivity Week, the East Anglia Regional Productivity Forum (RPF) is hosting an event to share its recent work on how the emerging economic sectors across East Anglia are related to each other. Members of the East Anglia RPF, including its new Chair, Katy Davies, will set out possible policy proposals to ensure that the whole region can benefit from East Anglia’s specific strengths. The event will also see colleagues from Data City presenting their unique, real-time industrial data on the most dynamic emerging economic sectors.
There will be the opportunity to share your own insights and experiences in a roundtable discussion on the challenges of productivity in East Anglia – in relation to People and Place – which will help to set the future research agenda for the Forum.
During the week The Productivity Institute will also launch the Productivity Agenda, a 10-chapter report written by academics spanning the Universities of Manchester, Cambridge, Cardiff, Kings College London and Warwick, among others, it will highlight nine key areas policymakers need to focus on to address productivity growth in the UK, and argue for a dedicated, independent growth and productivity institution with similar scope and influence to the Office for Budget Responsibility.
Bart van Ark, managing director of The Productivity Institute, said: “Nearly two decades of anemic productivity growth reflect a lack of economic dynamism and missed opportunities for investment, innovation, and improvement in living standards. Lower productivity has made the UK economy less resilient in difficult times. We are in urgent need of a national strategy to improve productivity across sectors, firms and regions.
“This week, and the wider Productivity Agenda, aims to shine a spotlight on the challenges the UK faces, bring together key stakeholders from across the public and private sectors to discuss and debate solutions and offer tangible advice to policymakers and business leaders that will be crucial to our future economic growth.”
The Productivity Institute was established in 2020 to address the UK’s long-held productivity challenges that have been prevalent for almost two decades. Between 2009 and 2019, Britain’s productivity growth rate was the second slowest in the G7. In 2022 output per hour worked was almost 15 percent below the average for France, Germany and the United States.
More information about National Productivity Week is available at www.productivtyweek.co.uk and The Productivity Institute at www.productivity.ac.uk
The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy.
