SR317 Potential measures of productivity and performance at the firm, grouped firm and regional level (2019)

The contention of earlier work by BRANZ is that traditional technical measures of productivity, while valuable for comparing industries and compiling national GDP estimates, are of little meaning or use to the individual firm. There are also a number of factors influencing technical productivity estimates over which the individual firm has no control, such as the boom-bust cycle or how accurately productivity is measured.

We propose four actions to make existing benchmarks available and to develop a more complete set of benchmarks for monitoring and improving performance:

• Collect and publish existing benchmark data in one place,
• Build a business process use index.
• Conduct an annual survey to fill in the substantial gaps.
• Compare New Zealand benchmarks to international comparisons.