Chapter 3: Job satisfaction, communication and productivity

Abbreviations

A list of the abbreviations used in this report is available in the Glossary

Productivity

Employees continue to report high rates of productivity, with 60% believing that their productivity had increased over the last 12 months (the same as for last year). This included 23% who felt that their productivity had increased markedly during the last 12 months and 38% who felt their productivity had increased somewhat. Twenty-two per cent felt that their productivity had remained the same, compared to 21% last year. Only 4% felt that their productivity had declined. The remaining 13% indicated that the question was not applicable to them (e.g. they had changed jobs in the last 12 months).

These results should be viewed with some caution as they are a measure of employees’ perceptions of their productivity in the last 12 months, and not of actual productivity improvement.

Employees’ views on whether or not their productivity had increased over the last 12 months varied considerably across large agencies, from 45% to 71%. Of large agencies, Medicare Australia and DFAT had a significantly greater proportion of employees who felt that their productivity had increased over the last 12 months than the APS average.

To help identify the drivers behind improved productivity, all relevant employees were asked to select the five most important factors, from a list of 17 factors, that had helped or would have helped them to increase their productivity over the last year. The results are presented in Table 3.8.¹³

Table 3.8 Factors improving employees’ productivity, 2005–06
Factor	Employees that nominated factor as helping to increase their productivity (%) 2005–06
Increased knowledge and/or experience in the job	53
Working to realistic performance expectations	43
Good working relationships with colleagues	42
Clear work plans and timetables	38
Having a manager who encourages and manages innovation	37
Good working relationship with my manager	36
Receiving effective feedback from my manager	35
Access to the information, resources and/or technology I need to perform my job	32
Access to effective learning and development	23
Effective formal and informal communication within my agency	22
Receiving effective mentoring	20
Developing effective strategies to deal with an overall reduction in resources	20
A change of focus on my work/ life balance priorities	17
Understanding how my work contributes to my agency’s objectives	14
Access to performance-related pay (e.g. bonus, advancement)	14
Developing or recruiting high performing staff under my management	11
Good working relationships with other APS agencies	7
Source: Employee survey

Not surprisingly, increased knowledge and/or experience in the job stood out as the most important factor aff ecting productivity.

Consistent with the employee engagement literature, good working relationships with colleagues and managers also figure prominently. This is noteworthy, given that good working relationships was also the most commonly selected job satisfaction factor for employees, and a good manager was among the top five job satisfaction factors.

The role of the manager features strongly as something which can have a positive impact on productivity. In addition to good working relationship with managers, a number of other factors closely related to the quality of management including working to realistic performance expectations, clear work plans andtimetables, having a manager who encourages and manages innovation and receiving effective feedback from my manager, were rated in the top five factors by a relatively high proportion of employees.

Only 7% of employees viewed good working relationships with other APS agencies as one of their top five factors. Other productivity improvement factors selected by only a small proportion of employees were developing or recruiting high performing staff under my management, understanding how my work contributes to my agency’s objectives and access to performance-related pay. While the proportion of employees who selected access to performance-related pay is relatively small (14%), it represents a large increase on the 2005 result (4%).

Overall, for 12 of the 16 factors at least 20% of employees viewed them as important to productivity improvement. This indicates not only that there is a wide range of factors that play a role in increasingindividual productivity, but that the importance of these factors varies considerably among individual employees.

Analysis of the job satisfaction summary index and the results for employees’ perceptions of their own productivity shows that there is a relationship between perceptions of increased productivity and higher than average levels of job satisfaction. Although we need to be careful in drawing conclusions about productivity from these questions, the results are consistent with the literature, which suggests that how people feel about their job can have a positive impact on their productivity.

On the other hand, taken as a whole, employee engagement factors identified through factor analysis explain only a relatively small part of the variance in productivity results. Clearly, productivity is influenced by a broader range of factors than those related to employee engagement. Strategies that focus on job satisfaction and employee engagement will be only one element of an overall approach to improving productivity, and other strategies, such as capability development and improvements in technology will also be important.

The following comments made in the employee survey, although not necessarily representative, illustrate a range of employees’ views about factors impacting on their productivity.

This job involves meeting deadlines all the time and hence productivity is always at its peak.

I have a significantly increased workload, which forces me to work longer hours, which in turn increases my productivity.

Due to [temporary] increased funding we now have enough staff to do the job properly. Previously, I had more work to do than I was able to perform alone. We now have clear division of labour and we are able to complete all aspects of our work effectively.

The key factor for increasing my productivity is having good people above me who can provide clear direction and support in determining the point in time and degree to which we should engage in an issue.

General experience and a very good working relationship with my Manager have increased my productivity inthe last 12 months.

Higher productivity is simply achieved by fewer people working harder (not by choice but by necessity).

My productivity would increase significantly if problems associated with IT were improved.

Due to a change in the filter for this question, data about the five most important factors cannot be compared between 2005 and 2006.