How to avoid outages by improving productivity and communications

A new survey by Motorola conducted by IDG Connect of industries like oil and gas, manufacturing and transport takes a look at a number of key areas within commercial operations. Though the survey covers a lot of ground we decided to look at three areas that may directly relate to your company: Productivity, Downtime and Communications. All three topics are closely linked, with the appropriate application of two, and avoidance of one, provide your organisation with the room to grow.

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Raising Productivity

The survey offers some interesting insights in terms of how businesses can enhance productivity. Specifically, it wanted to discover if working longer and faster is the best approach, and how businesses can operate effectively even when things don’t go according to plan. Looking at the survey, 3 out of 5 businesses believe improved skills improve the overall productivity of the employee. That is over half of all companies recognising that they can improve simply through better training.

“This is clearly an issue that organisations will have to address,” says the survey “potentially by actively recruiting and training people to replace those retiring and by ensuring staff are always well versed in current technologies and processes.”

40% of the respondents believe that improving employee engagement is important for the overall improvement of productivity. So if you go ahead and make improvements to your employee engagement levels, you could pave the way for “greater loyalty and desire for success.”

The final piece of a company’s ability to perform well operationally then is collaboration. Finding ways to improve collaboration among workers improves productivity significantly thought half of respondents. This is especially important in terms of a workplace emergency, says the survey.

Downtime – The Mortal Enemy of Productivity

Downtime is the “enemy of productivity” with any prolonged outage likely to cause severe financial hardship to your company. 37% of survey respondents flagged equipment failure as the leading cause behind downtime but 26% cited failures in communication and 10% believed by health and safety failings were the main contributor. On average, respondents of the survey said 22 days a year are lost as a result of downtime, quite a significant number, for an organisation working on a seven day week that means 3 weeks of work, and 6% of overall production.

As a result, the survey has some tips that could be directly applied to your own organisation, like ensuring your factory floor is equipped with the most reliable equipment. In the middle of a breakdown the “emphasis has to be on getting the equipment up and running again,” says the survey which means the collaboration of key personnel is key at this juncture. If you can’t talk to colleagues you can’t manage an incident well and you can’t share information,” says the survey.

Effective Communications

The establishment of effective communications technology is ‘vital’ in terms of improving productivity, halting downtime and therefore moving closer to your ‘business goals’ according to the survey. 90% of all respondents want to be able to communicate during power outages and emergencies.

So what can you take away as a manager? Well, you may want to ensure you have a secure line installed and that you have the ability to stay connected even when the power is out. This would call for a “reliable and robust” form of communication that is “unlikely to be provided by regular mobile networks.” Therefore, as the survey relates, it may be better to look at alternative communication avenues to ensure what you are sharing is as secure as possible.

If you would like to learn more about using increased communication and employee ROI to decrease outages and increase productivity take a look at our 60 seconds Video or Try a Free Demo Today and we will walk you through our employee onboarding and training solutions.