{"id":38052,"date":"2018-07-06T10:27:35","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T09:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.enterpriseresearch.ac.uk\/?p=38052"},"modified":"2022-05-12T12:23:23","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T11:23:23","slug":"buildingbetterbusinesshealth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enterpriseresearch.ac.uk\/buildingbetterbusinesshealth\/","title":{"rendered":"Building better business health"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Building better business health: what can we learn from public health campaigns?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The continuing productivity gap between the UK and its international competitors has focussed attention on the competitiveness of UK firms. So how can we boost the health and vitality of UK businesses? Or, more accurately, how can we encourage businesses themselves to take steps which boost their productivity and competitiveness?<\/p>\n

Well, we all know about the \u2018five-a-day\u2019 campaign to encourage us to eat more fruit and vegetables, a public health campaign which originated in the US<\/a>, and which has run in a similar form in Australia, Canada, France, German, Japan and New Zealand and a number of other countries. Of course, being aware of the benefits of eating more fruit and vegetables is one thing. Actually doing it is quite another matter. The availability and costs of fresh fruit and vegetables for example may both be barriers to healthy eating.<\/p>\n

Despite these challenges the UK actually tops the European League table in terms of 5-a-day with over a third of UK adults getting their 5-a-day and beating Denmark and the Netherlands (2nd<\/sup> and 3rd<\/sup> in the league) by a substantial margin. In terms of business health the picture in the UK is less rosy, with flat productivity growth and firms\u2019 take-up of productivity enhancing innovations such as cloud-based computing lagging some of our key international competitors (Figure 1).<\/p>\n

Figure 1: Use of cloud computing 2016 \u2013 all firms with more than 10 employees<\/strong><\/p>\n\n