Fair Work Commission

The AWRS contains a range of labour cost measures that have been derived from the financial information reported by enterprises.

The AWRS dataset also draws on imputed data that has been generated from median values sourced from the ABS.

Further information about data imputation can be found in the Technical notes.

Labour costs

Table 3.8 indicates that, for over half (57%) of enterprises, the cost of wages and salaries amounts to less than 30% of the income generated from sales and service.

Source: AWRS 2014, Financial Information and Enterprise Characteristics (Recruitment screener) survey.

Base = 1616 enterprises for analysis of all enterprises. Enterprises that did not receive income from the sale of goods and services in the last financial year are excluded from the analysis.

Base = 1251 enterprises that identified as private businesses, operating for profit.

Measurement & perceptions of labour productivity

Both the AWRS and the AWIRS 1995 collected information about performance management practices implemented by firms.

One of the performance measures examined in both studies is labour productivity.

Due to differences in the questions posed to survey respondents and the differing unit of analysis (i.e. enterprise-level for the AWRS and workplace-level for the AWIRS), these data are not strictly comparable. The results are therefore indicative only of the incidence of labour productivity measurement at the enterprise-level through the AWRS and the workplace-level in the AWIRS. Examining a sub-population of single-site enterprises in the AWRS may be able to indicate any changes over time of the importance placed on measuring labour productivity.

The AWIRS 1995 found that 69% of workplaces had procedures in place to measure productivity at the workplace.^[1] The AWRS found that approximately 61% of enterprises reported having processes or practices in place to measure the productivity of the workforce.

Management perceptions of changes in labour productivity were also canvassed in both the AWIRS 1995 and the AWRS. When asked to describe labour productivity at the workplace compared with 2 years ago, 33% of managers in the AWIRS 1995 study said it was a lot higher and 42% stated it was a little higher.^[2] A similar question was asked in the AWRS, although the reference period was the last financial year and the year prior to that, rather than 2 years prior to the survey.

Figure 3.1 summarises perceptions of labour productivity changes over the last financial year at enterprises of different sizes.

As demonstrated in Figure 3.1, approximately 1 in 10 enterprises indicated that workforce productivity in the last financial year was a lot higher than for the previous financial year and 32% indicated it was a little higher.

Source: AWRS 2014, Structure and Operations and Enterprise Characteristics (Recruitment screener) survey.

Base = 2759 enterprises. Enterprises that did not operate in the last financial year and enterprises that responded 'unsure' are excluded from the analysis.