Solving the Productivity Puzzle


Book Description

CATEGORY WINNER: Business Book Awards 2021 - HR & Management Category An engaged and productive workforce is essential for organizational growth and business success. However, record levels of disengaged staff, a lack of motivation and employees feeling that they lack the necessary skills and support to excel at their jobs is putting this in jeopardy. HR practitioners are ideally placed to address these issues and boost productivity at every stage of the employee lifecycle to improve individual performance and drive business results. Solving the Productivity Puzzle is a practical guide for all people management professionals to address the challenge of stagnating people productivity. It covers how to embed learning and development activities to ensure that employees feel equipped with the skills they need to meet their goals, motivate a workforce made up of six generations with competing priorities, develop an effective workforce planning strategy to make sure the right people are in the right place at the right time, with the right motivation in the organization to build a company culture that allows people to thrive. Solving the Productivity Puzzle also includes expert guidance on how implement change to opportunity in the workforce, track and measure productivity and how to leverage new technologies to support employees. Including case studies from global organizations including Accenture, Aetna, Apple, Google, IBM, and SAP. This is essential reading for HR professionals needing to supercharge productivity in their organization for both employee and business success.




Solving the Procrastination Puzzle


Book Description

"Previously published as The Procrastinator's Digest in Canada by Howling Pines Publishers in 2010."




Calculating Success


Book Description

This title helps us in using analytics to make more effective talent management decisions. Most managers understand that employees can make or break a company's strategy. You can have the best ideas and the most promising plan, but if you don't have the right people to carry it out, that plan will fail. Still, despite having this critical knowledge, most companies don't have a data-driven approach to the decisions they make about talent. In fact, a recent IBM study that interviewed over 400 senior HR executives showed that only 6 per cent of companies believe they can effectively use human capital data to make strategic workforce decisions. Enter "Calculating Success", the forthcoming book by human capital experts Carl Hoffmann, Eric Lesser, and Tim Ringo. Based on decades of experience creating human capital systems at IBM, the authors show how using analytics can dramatically improve a company's ability to make better and faster talent decisions. By organizing the book around four crucial questions managers must ask, the book provides a framework to help executives rethink how they use information on talent. The result? A path to using analytics to make more effective talent management decisions. In addition, the authors' ideas help to link HR with all levels of the organization in a strategic way, by showing readers how to connect their version of analytics to the strategic mission of the larger organization, so that the analytics flows throughout the enterprise. With detailed examples and studies from IBM's Institute for Business Value and Human Capital Management practice, this book will make you rethink the relationship of talent to business success. The results allow for a more stable and cost-effective workforce, an improved ability to motivate employees, and a more systematic approach to developing critical talent.




Productivity Knowhow


Book Description

Productivity improvement is the biggest issue facing any manager at any level in any organisation in any sector - and the biggest peacetime issue facing any government minister too. Dick Smythe was educated at Bolton School, graduated in pure mathematics and statistics at St Andrews University and then took a masters in Operations Research at Birmingham University. He was then recruited by Europe's leading consultancy of the day, PA Consulting Group, and went on to set up and grow their Productivity Services Division into a significant part of the business, becoming a PA director and sitting on their UK management consultancy board - whilst there, he led a joint study with the CBI into UK productivity, and presented the results on TV, radio and to the national press with Director General Sir John Banham - The Times leader commented: "It is refreshing to come across something that has its feet firmly planted on the ground" Since then, he has mixed productivity consultancy work with playing the property and stock markets, skippering his own boat in the Fastnet and many other ocean yacht races and keeping his golf handicap down to single figures As the late Peter Drucker once said, managers have always sought something which lets them 'do their job with less effort, in less time, yet with greater impact'.




Extreme Productivity


Book Description

“Required reading for professionals—and aspiring professionals—of all levels.” —Shirley Ann Jackson, President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Former Chairman of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Robert C. Pozen, one of the business world’s most successful—and productive—executives, reveals the surprising secrets to workplace productivity and high performance. It's far too easy for working professionals to become overwhelmed by a pile of time-sensitive projects, a backlog of emails, and endless meetings. In order to be truly productive, they must make a critical shift in mindset from hours worked to results produced. With Extreme Productivity, Pozen explains how individuals can maximize their time and energy by determining and focusing on their highest priorities. He also provides a toolkit of practical tips and techniques to help professionals at all stages of their careers maximize their time at work. This essential handbook empowers every person with proven methods for prioritizing their time to achieve high-impact results and refine their career goals for long-term success, all while leading a full and meaningful personal life as well.




The Procrastination Equation


Book Description

DON'T WAIT TO READ THIS BOOK: The world's leading expert on procrastination uses his groundbreaking research to offer understanding on a matter that bedevils us all. Writing with humour, humanity and solid scientific information reminiscent of Stumbling on Happiness and Freakonomics, Piers Steel explains why we knowingly and willingly put off a course of action despite recognizing we'll be worse off for it. For those who surf the Web instead of finishing overdue assignments, who always say diets start tomorrow, who stay up late watching TV to put off going to sleep, The Procrastination Equation explains why we do what we do—or in this case don't—and why in Western societies we're in the midst of an escalating procrastination epidemic. Dr. Piers Steel takes on the myths and misunderstandings behind procrastination and motivation. With accessible prose and the benefits of new scientific research, he provides insight into why we procrastinate even though the result is that we are less happy, healthy, and even wealthy. Who procrastinates and why? How many ways, big and small, do we procrastinate? How can we stop doing it? The reasons are part cultural, part psychological, part biological. And, with a million new ways to distract ourselves in the digitized world, more of us are potentially damaging ourselves by putting things off. But Steel not only analyzes the factors that weigh us down but the things that motivate us—including understanding the value of procrastination.




Gone with the Headwinds


Book Description

to come




Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses


Book Description

Improving public schools through performance-based funding Spurred by court rulings requiring states to increase public-school funding, the United States now spends more per student on K-12 education than almost any other country. Yet American students still achieve less than their foreign counterparts, their performance has been flat for decades, millions of them are failing, and poor and minority students remain far behind their more advantaged peers. In this book, Eric Hanushek and Alfred Lindseth trace the history of reform efforts and conclude that the principal focus of both courts and legislatures on ever-increasing funding has done little to improve student achievement. Instead, Hanushek and Lindseth propose a new approach: a performance-based system that directly links funding to success in raising student achievement. This system would empower and motivate educators to make better, more cost-effective decisions about how to run their schools, ultimately leading to improved student performance. Hanushek and Lindseth have been important participants in the school funding debate for three decades. Here, they draw on their experience, as well as the best available research and data, to show why improving schools will require overhauling the way financing, incentives, and accountability work in public education.




International Productivity Monitor


Book Description

The 32nd issue of the International Productivity Monitor is a special issue produced in collaboration with the OECD. All articles published in this issue were selected from papers presented at the First Annual Conference of the OECD Global Forum on Productivity held in Lisbon, Portugal, July ...




Getting Things Done


Book Description

The book Lifehack calls "The Bible of business and personal productivity." "A completely revised and updated edition of the blockbuster bestseller from 'the personal productivity guru'"—Fast Company Since it was first published almost fifteen years ago, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has become one of the most influential business books of its era, and the ultimate book on personal organization. “GTD” is now shorthand for an entire way of approaching professional and personal tasks, and has spawned an entire culture of websites, organizational tools, seminars, and offshoots. Allen has rewritten the book from start to finish, tweaking his classic text with important perspectives on the new workplace, and adding material that will make the book fresh and relevant for years to come. This new edition of Getting Things Done will be welcomed not only by its hundreds of thousands of existing fans but also by a whole new generation eager to adopt its proven principles.