The report, ‘Northern Ireland Productivity Dashboard 2023’ has shown there has been a recent improvement in NI’s productivity, although, the research suggests this improvement is unlikely to persist, as it was down to repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The report was one of two launched during an event to mark UK Productivity Week (27 November – 1 December 2023). 

The Dashboard was created by Dr David Jordan, Ruth Donaldson, and Professor John Turner on behalf of the NI Productivity Forum, based at Queen’s Business School.  

The Forum is part of The Productivity Institute, a UK-wide organisation that works across academia, business, and policy, to better understand, measure and enable productivity across the UK. It was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

The Dashboard demonstrates Northern Ireland’s performance across 18 different drivers of productivity, relative to the UK average and other regions, and over time, highlighting where barriers to productivity growth exist, their severity, and whether progress is being made to address them. It showed that 14 of the 18 drivers are below the UK average, with only 2 better, and the remaining 2 either equal to the UK average, or below, but above the UK average. 

Key findings:  

• The number of individuals with a third-level education continues to close on the UK average, reflecting a long-term improvement. 
• While improvements have been made in the long-term with the number of individuals with no or low skills in NI, an attainment gap persists, with NI having almost double the UK average for people with no or low skills.  
• 31% of SMEs rated political uncertainty and government policy as a major obstacle in running their business as they would wish in the next 12 months, compared with the UK average of 27%.  
• There has been a significant improvement in 5G mobile coverage, with coverage almost doubling and narrowing the gap with the rest of the UK.

The most recent data shows productivity in NI is 11% below the UK average, and NI is also far behind the Republic of Ireland, where productivity is around 8% higher than the UK average.  

Speaking about the report, Dr David Jordan from Queen’s Business School said: “Low productivity remains the biggest long-term challenge facing Northern Ireland’s economy. While the most recent data shows Northern Ireland closing its productivity gap to the UK level, our Dashboard shows this has not been reflected in the underlying drivers of long-term productivity growth. We think this closing of the productivity gap reflects the disruption associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, rather than a fundamental improvement in the performance of the local economy.”  

Ruth Donaldson from Queen’s Business School added: “This is the second year the Northern Ireland Productivity Forum has published its Dashboard, and there has been a slight worsening of Northern Ireland’s performance since last year across the 18 productivity drivers. However, it is welcome that despite lagging behind the UK average in 14 areas, more drivers are showing both short and long-term improvement.”  

The second report ‘Do Managers Matter? Management Practices in post-Covid Northern Ireland’, was led by Dr David Jordan, Sweta Pramanick, and Professor John Turner.  

The study was the first large-scale survey of management practices in NI of all firms with five or more employees, with 272 firms responding to the survey. The report was based on the results from the 2022 NI Management Survey. 

The survey results highlighted that there is a long tail of firms with poor management practices in NI.  

It also found that that firms that are larger, have managers with higher levels of human capital, and receive government support, have better management practices; while firms that face weak competition, or are second-generation family-managed firms, have poorer management practices.  

Recommendations include continued investment in the human capital of managers and supporting increased digitalisation through improved management practices.  

Professor John Turner from Queen’s Business School commented: “Our study shows that managers matter for the innovation and performance of NI firms. One of the best investments a local business can make is to put money into the training and development of their managers.” 

The 2023 Northern Ireland Productivity Dashboard is available here: https://www.productivity.ac.uk/research/northern-ireland-productivity-dashboard-2023 

The report, ‘Do Managers Matter? Management Practices in post-Covid Northern Ireland’ is available here: https://www.productivity.ac.uk/research/do-managers-matter-management-practices-in-post-covid-northern-ireland 

 

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Media enquiries to Zara McBrearty at Queen's Communications Office on email: z.mcbrearty@qub.ac.uk