New Zealand workers are working more but are less productive than many major economies, costing billions in lost economic gains and increasing burden on employees, according to a new study.
A study by the Institute of Economic Research for accounting software company Xero says the New Zealand economy could benefit by billions of dollars if it made greater and better use of such technologies as cloud computing.
It estimates New Zealanders would have to work another 11 hours a day to match the most productive country in the OECD, Ireland, and even by another 2.5 hours a day to match Australia.
"For Kiwis working a 40-hour work week, this is equivalent to working an extra day per week to make up the labour productivity gap, and that's just to reach the average productivity mark," the report says.
Xero New Zealand manager Bridget Snelling says put another way it would mean hiring one more worker for every five currently employed, which would be a near impossibility in the current labour market.
She says the problem meant both businesses and employees were being put under increased strain.
"But these sobering numbers make it clear that we can't simply put our heads down and work our way to better productivity."
"Right now businesses across Aotearoa are spending a huge amount of time on tasks that can be automated or done more efficiently with the help of an app."
Snelling says companies, especially smaller businesses, needed to look at digitising many of the functions such as invoicing, stock control, and using cloud computing.
The report estimates a 20 per cent rise in the use of digital tools would add between $3.5 billion and $6.2 billion to the value of the economy.
"Those are not numbers to be joked about, it's an incredible amount of money that would do great things for the economy, if every small business could become more productive the gains for Aotearoa as a whole would be enormous," says Snelling.
She says there is advice out there for small businesses to help them invest in digitisation to seek financial and social gains.
1 comment
Well known
Posted on 22-08-2022 19:40 | By Kancho
Productivity equals income . The government spends borrowed money ignoring priorities and productivity as to how the country pays. So instead of education, health, child harm, housing crime etc we borrow billions more to buy kiwibank that has hardly been successful against Australian owned banks and already owned by New Zealand interests. It is not necessary to be 100 percent owned for instance Air NZ is controling percentage is sufficient. Worse governments never run things well and this government even less so with poor delivery on most everything.
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