Jersey Business chief executive Paul Murphy goes through the results of this year’s Productivity Survey with Emily Moore and outlines opportunities to drive further growth
HOW much time of your working day do you feel is truly productive?
It may sound like a strange question, particularly as most people probably feel as though they never stop, as task after task and email after email demand their attention.
And yet, according to the results of this year’s Jersey Business Productivity Survey, which were revealed at the organisation’s annual conference last week, almost a quarter of the average day is unproductive, a figure which gives both cause for concern and optimism.
“For the past five years, the responses have shown that 24% of the working day is unproductive,” said Jersey Business chief executive Paul Murphy. “If you consider that most people work around eight hours a day, that means that two hours per person per day are spent unproductively.
“While people’s views of productivity may be subjective, even if you take half that number and say that one hour per person per day is unproductive, with a workforce of 64,680 people working an average of 253 days a year, that means we are losing 16,364,040 hours a year, which shows just how much potential there is to increase productivity.”
Delving further into the findings of the survey, which was completed by nearly 250 businesses, Paul said that organisations had identified five key barriers to productivity.
“Competing priorities was the biggest challenge, as people felt they had too much to do,” he said. “This was followed by recruitment and retention of team members, lack of time, culture and process inefficiency. These factors combined show that people feel under pressure because there is more coming at them than there has perhaps even been, both in terms of work and life.
“The most important barrier for me, though, is culture, as the wrong culture can be a huge barrier to improving productivity, and most other barriers are often linked to culture. If you take process inefficiency, for example, this often comes down to ownership, understanding and transparency of processes and making sure that organisations find ways in which processes can be developed, something which revolves around people.”
Saying that the results highlighted an opportunity to “improve our days”, Paul added that this would only be achieved if the barriers were overcome.
“A lot of respondents said that they were wasting time because of disjointed processes and unnecessary extra work,” he said. “While it is difficult to determine exactly what is meant by that, it does show that they are not focused on the task in hand.”
Despite the barriers, there were some signs of progress within the results, with 47% of respondents saying that they felt as though they were “optimising productivity opportunities”, up from 39% in 2025.
“That increase is very positive, although it still leaves us with a challenge, as 53% of people are not doing this,” he said. “That shows there is still great potential to change and improve, something which survey respondents said could be achieved through new technology, process and people/culture.
“Although I agree that those are three key areas on which to focus, I would flip them around and say that people and culture need to come first, as that will help to develop the processes which will then identify the technology needed.
Technology should never be the driver, although the survey also showed that 60% of businesses had implemented artificial intelligence in 2026, compared with 43% the year before.”
On the topic of skills, the survey showed that the top three areas in which businesses were investing were industry specifics, leadership and technology, with the focus on leadership training particularly pleasing from Paul’s perspective.
Another area on which businesses were quizzed was strategy, with 19% saying their organisation had a clear productivity strategy in place, and 51% saying they had an “informal approach” to the topic.
“While it is encouraging to see 70% of businesses having some sort of strategy, the goal would be to see more businesses adopting formal strategies,” said Paul. “Critically, though, to develop a strategy, businesses need access to the right tools, and only 42% of respondents said they had that access, so there is a challenge for Jersey Business to provide that support to organisations.”
Interestingly, said Paul, there were three key benefits reported by businesses which had improved their productivity, with 39% of respondents saying that they had gained more time as a result of the changes.
“This just shows that if you overcome the ‘lack of time’ barrier and invest, you will gain more time in the long run,” said Paul. “Meanwhile, 32% said that their customer service had improved, probably because productivity gains had allowed them to serve customers more quickly and efficiently, while 31% said they had seen a reduction of costs. This is really important, as we hear a lot about inflation and rising input costs, so showing that deploying productivity reduces operational costs is a key message.”
Analysing these findings and turning them into actionable points for organisations, Paul said the keys were to set priorities and recruit and retain the right people, while creating a culture and employee value proposition that supported staff, and helped workers to manage their time.
“This comes back to the point about people feeling as though they are constantly under pressure,” he said. “We are not just talking about helping people to manage their diary but also to understand how productive they are and when they are at their most productive.
Some people are night owls, others are early birds, but the most efficient time management comes from recognising when people perform at their peak and supporting them to do that.”
Another area on which the survey, which was carried out by 4Insight, touched was the Better Business Support Package, part of a £20m government initiative designed to help employers manage the transition to a living wage.
As part of this support, £5.3m was allocated to the Better Business Grant in both 2025 and 2026 to help Jersey businesses improve productivity, invest in staff training, grow the visitor economy and support apprenticeships. Asked about their awareness of this initiative, 80% of respondents said they knew about it, and 35% said they would like to access a grant to “accelerate their investments”.
“If you scale this figure, it tells you that 2,975 businesses would like to access this support to invest in their people and processes,” said Paul, whose organisation administers the funding.
Reviewing the overall findings, Paul said that there were some encouraging results but that there was still a lot of work to be done.
“I am delighted that businesses are increasingly aware of what productivity can do and understand what they need to overcome to become more productive,” he said.
“We can also see that the delivery of productivity is driving great outcomes across the Island, supported by the Better Business Grants, but the key is to keep going and continuing driving those outcomes.
“When we talk about growth, we need to think about the formula through which we enable that growth. That formula is productivity, and we need to promote that across the whole Island, as it will strengthen Jersey’s economy and make us more resilient. That is why investment in this area is essential, and that investment must come from all areas.
“It is incumbent on all of us – government, industries and businesses – to fund, drive and deliver productivity gains. If we do that, we will see more people saving money and time, becoming more resilient and managing to trade through the difficult conditions which I imagine will continue for some time.”
Don’t miss next week’s edition of The Business for a report on the conference’s keynote speech, which was delivered by Petra Velzeboer.
