EEF has been working with a group of academics and its own members over the last six months to undertake an exploratory study on high-performance work practices in UK manufacturing.
The focus of the project is to understand the barriers to introducing high-performance work practices and to identify future research and interventions that might increase the speed of adoption.
Our review has identified a number of important barriers:
- Product market strategies fail to provide the context for high-performance work practices to embed
- Front-line managers do not understand and cannot introduce these practices in a sustainable way
- Senior managers do not have an ‘investment philosophy’ and see people as a cost rather than an investment, consequently restricting the adoption of new practices
- Poor-quality employee relations contexts create low-trust environments which militate against innovation-in-work practices
- The perceived payback period on the investment costs of adopting new practices is too long (typically three to five years)
To download the report click the link on the right.