To wonder why productivity in the U.K. is so low...

[coconuttella]

Germany are 30% more productive... Surely this is the key problem that need some addressing with our economy.... which in turn would support our schools and health service etc. What are we doing wrong, and how do we address it?

Lack of investment into working ICT infrastructure (the programs we use at work are a joke and often don't work), lack of investment in equipment and lack of investment in people. It's easier not to train anyone so the jobs aren't done properly and have to be redone or be on hold until it's done properly.

Could it be that Germany has seen significant wage growth and continued investment in public services, with employees fully represented in business decision making over the past 10 years, while the UK has the opppsite?

Also lack of investment in all types of education and childcare.

Education tends to be poor and people are put off university due to the cost (but it's free in the rest of Europe). We also don't do proper education for those who are not academic so they do not get skills for more technical manual jobs.

Childcare is too expensive so many women have to give up having good careers as they cannot afford to work until the children are in school and so end up with poorly paid part time jobs.

Isn't it also about working hours? I think studies have shown that working longer hours, like in the uk, actually reduces productivity.

Lack of investment in transport. We probably spend more time stuck in traffic in UK.

Maybe also our London centric culture. I believe that industry etc is more evenly spread around several cities.

Could it be that Germany has seen significant wage growth and continued investment in public services,

On the contrary... I've works in public sector for 20'years and whilst cuts in funding have been tough, and arguably unreasonable in terms of pay, the public sector is immeasurably more efficient than they were in the 90s where work culture in councils was sluggish and posts existed that added little. To be productive we need the economy to produce more efficiently, and not spend and consume more!

I'd say the same as other posters: lack of investment in education, childcare, infrastructure, inefficient denationalisation (Southern Railway, anyone)- and very definitely long working hours. Presenteeism does not enhance effectiveness and it has the knock-on effect of diminishing educational investment in the next generation.

I think our culture of "presentee-ism" has a lot to answer for. There are so many people working 48 hour weeks who could get just as much done in 30 hours or so if they stopped pissing about on the internet. Oh. Hang on....

There's a feeling that being busy is the same as being productive... This is prevalent in many workplaces and one of the reasons councils (and I say this as someone who works in them) have been able to withstand substantial funding reductions (excluding social care from this) whilst continuing to deliver necessary services.

The EU have manipulated where companies set up shop. For example, Twinings tea which has always been manufactured in the UK was purposefully moved to the mainland to create jobs there. That's why OUR productivity is low.

Idk, the Germans are freakishly efficient aren't they?

The UK lost van production to Turkey, car capacity to Slovakia, chocolate to Poland, domestic appliances to the Netherlands and the Czech Republic and metal containers to Poland amongst others in recent years. In various cases there was an EU grant or loan involved in the new capacity.

I am a self employed consultant but sometimes spend the day in clients offices and I am absolutely horrified at the time wasted.
People will turn up at 9 to start at 9 but have a drink, chat with teammates etc before doing any actual work. They are often militant about breaks, take cigarette breaks and spend time chatting.
I'm not saying that none of this is reasonable but I do think that there is a general acceptance here of not really working very hard.
DH is German and we also recently watched a documentary where a family from the UK swapped with a German family for a week and the man actually went to work at his German counterparts Job ( I think in a pencil factory). They arrived 10 minutes early to actually begin at 9, took the allowed breaks but were very focussed the rest of the time.
DH agrees that this is the case, he says that he feels he is much more productive than a lot of his teammates at work here.

Low skill low wage country. We have decimated our heavy industry and manufacturing without really replacing it with anything. Too much reliance on degrees for all - if you look at Germany they have great apprenticeship streams which produce good quality skilled jobs and aren't seen as second rate. We need that rather than everyone having a shit degree.
Reduction and erosion of worker rights (much better in most of Europe) and lack of investment in ongoing training, education and skills. Massive inequality
Uk is also getting a worryingly anti intellectual culture.
We need to create good quality vocational apprenticeships, reduce uni places but increase quality there. Invest MUCH more in early years intervention (things like sure start) and tackle inequality. Because inequality is a HUGE problem. Far too many kids left on the scrap heap when decent early intervention, reduction in child poverty and education that's targeted and useful would see them succeed.

I now live in Scandinavia and we somehow manage to be really productive despite two decent fika breaks a day, A Proper Lunch and everyone fucking off for the entire month of July.
But we have:
Almost free high quality daycare
Worker rights
Vastly more equal society

It needs to start from the cradle up.

Oh and focusing on R and D and actually making shit and inventing shit rather than customer 'service' and call centres might help too.

We should be an intellectual and research powerhouse, but we aren't.

Agree with pp that there is a very definite devaluation of practical skills in this country. You see it at school- nominally, they do woodwork, but when did your averagely clever child last produce something you could sit on or use in the household? Nominally, they do textiles- but when did your not-particularly-interested child produce something they could actually wear? Nominally, they do food tech, but how many of them come out of that able to cook nutritious and economical meals for the family?

Yes, we live in a modern society where you don't need to make your own shirts or candlesticks. But what low ambition crafts lessons actually teach children is that creating and manufacturing things is not a serious thing to do, it's not important in the way biology and Shakespeare are important. And that, I fear, has a carry-on effect.

Puckered the EU did not allow Poland to use its ERDF money to entice Twinings to Poland as the company didn't meet the grant criteria. Twinings stared at the time that Poland was a better hub for its European operations and that the move was not dependent on EU funding.

I'd say the same as other posters: lack of investment in education, childcare, infrastructure, inefficient denationalisation (Southern Railway, anyone)-

How much tax do they pay in Germany? Not just income tax, total tax. And how do they find their health care, for example?

austerity fucks with productivity too. I imagine it's a huge number of factors that varies from each worker but I think austerity and a lack of well... anything (export wise)is a good one.
We don't even make our own goods (food etc).

What an at said. Also there are links between low productivity and our low wage culture, lack of job security, zero-hours contracts etc.

Needless paperwork and data crunching. A teacher will still have the same key outcomes in terms of teaching say 20 hours out of 25 periods of a school week that they did 15 years ago, but expectations of complex marking, detailed evidence of planning and re-marking, data analysis mean that many extra hours are taken up outside of directed time for little demonstrable benefit.

I can't vouch for other occupations from experience, but from talking to other people, the same culture is widespread and growing.

Working long hours while tired on a quest for perfection is often less productive than being targeted, taking appropriate breaks and aiming for good. Something has to give along the way at some point.

I agree with PPs re the way education is highly focused on university as the only route to a career. There needs to be more options for training and apprenticeships and also more on the job skills training. People at entry level jobs should feel like there is a possibility to progress and better themselves. I can see why productivity is low if you haven't had a pay rise for years and you see little prospect of progression no matter how hard work.

Tax levels in Germany are progressive, there's a rate of roughly 8500 euro untaxed then it goes up to 42% plus a 5% solidarity tax. Like Sweden, you can really see where it goes - here we have the roads ploughed at least daily in winter, the potholes get fixed and little things like flowers in town/street cleaning are done meticulously- these things seem trivial. It make a big difference to quality of life. There is a general sense that tax is spent wisely, which I never got in the uk with its.crumbly roads and bins that overflowed.
Healthcare is excellent and done on a public insurance type basis. You can opt out of paying into one of the public funds and go private if you want. It's a really good system.

The UK lost van production to Turkey, car capacity to Slovakia, chocolate to Poland, domestic appliances to the Netherlands and the Czech Republic and metal containers to Poland amongst others in recent years. In various cases there was an EU grant or loan involved in the new capacity.

No.

One word: Thatcher.

On these boards we often hear that ideology doesn't matter. It does.

Thatcher's move to monetarism was specifically designed to make finance the foundation of the British economy. But more than that it was an ideological philosophy which relegated industry to the second (or third) tier.

The low wage culture here is the result of low productivity, not the cause of it.

We've had decades of underinvestment in the workplace, infrastructure, and in technical education but for me one of the most insidious causes is the appalling levels of basic literacy and numeracy in the UK, and the baffling pride that so many Brits take in their own. I cannot think of a job where I have not had to dedicate huge amounts of time to checking and correcting other people's work.