Productivity has become one of Australia’s most persistent economic challenges.
Governments debate it, economists measure it and business leaders are urged to improve it. Yet for many business owners, productivity is less about economic theory than finding better ways to use limited time, people and resources.
At its simplest, productivity is not especially complicated.
“All we usually mean by productivity is the amount of value added per hour worked,” says Westpac chief economist Luci Ellis. “It literally is just ‘stuff divided by time’.”
The challenge is turning that simple idea into practical outcomes. The businesses featured in Westpac’s latest W Talks report, Productivity in Practice, show that gains often come not from working harder, but from working smarter.
For Queensland GP and MBSPro co-founder Dr Casey Going, the issue was the growing administrative burden facing doctors. Clinical notes, billing requirements and compliance tasks were consuming time that could otherwise be spent with patients.
“Having an AI scribe that can accurately write your notes removes a significant burden and allows you to focus on the patient rather than the keyboard,” Going says.
MBSPro’s AI-powered platform automates many of those tasks. According to the company, some practices have reported billing improvements of up to 20%, while some users save between one and two hours a day on administration.
The productivity gain is not simply about efficiency. It is about allowing skilled professionals to spend more time on the work that delivers the greatest value.
At wellness business endota, productivity starts somewhere different: culture.
From its beginnings as a single spa on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, endota has grown into a network of more than 100 spas supported by a wellness college that has trained more than 1,000 graduates. Throughout that growth, the business has focused on embedding its values through recruitment, training, performance measures and career development.
Co-founder Melanie Gleeson sees alignment as critical.
“For me, a productive workforce is one that’s aligned to the purpose and clear on the direction of the business,” she says. “If we’re all working towards the same goal, there’s a lot more focus and momentum.”
A different perspective comes from Humpty Doo Barramundi in the Northern Territory. The family-owned aquaculture business has grown from producing six kilograms of fish a week to more than 120 tonnes, supported by innovations including AI-powered fish-counting and breeding technologies.
But chief executive Dan Richards says technology is only part of the story.
“We’re addicted to improvement,” he says. “We look for opportunities right across the business to explore and implement improvement continuously.”
He also credits a diverse and engaged workforce with helping solve problems and identify opportunities for growth.
Together, these stories challenge the idea that productivity is a choice between investing in people or investing in technology. The strongest results often come when businesses do both, equipping employees with better tools while removing the friction that prevents them from doing their best work.
Australia’s productivity challenge is unlikely to be solved by a single breakthrough technology or policy reform. More likely, it will be addressed incrementally, through thousands of businesses making smarter decisions about how work gets done.
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