The UK’s significant productivity crisis is exacerbated by outdated and inefficient office environments, and improving these workplaces is a practical and cost-effective starting point for businesses to boost national output, employee efficiency and staff retention, says Phil Bentley

Last Friday, The Office for Budget Responsibility submitted its latest estimates for the UK economy to the Treasury. If newspaper reports are true, they make for grim reading. That, although the UK’s productivity figures have hardly been stellar for years, the truth is worse. The OBR’s likely downward revision to the nation’s productivity statistics – and the resulting reduction in its estimates of the size of the UK economy – has made an already grim picture even grimmer, with our efficiency and output as a nation now lagging woefully behind international competitors such as the USA, Germany and France.

While the immediate focus on the OBR’s work has been on the impact it will have on the Treasury’s Budget forecasts, it is also a moment to stand back and debate why Britain has a productivity crisis, and what we can do to address it.

It is clear at the outset that the causes are complex but that two of the main drivers are a........

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