Britain’s small businesses are doing more to fix the country’s chronic productivity problem than giant blue-chip companies, according to official figures.
Companies with fewer than ten employees have experienced the fastest productivity growth of any business group since 2009, the Office for National Statistics said.
Better productivity is key to rising living standards and higher wages but growth has virtually flatlined since the recession, leaving Britain a fifth less efficient than France and Germany. However, the ONS analysis showed that the problem was more concentrated among large companies than small ones.
When measured on an output-per-worker basis, productivity has increased at a faster pace among Britain’s smallest companies than the larger ones. As a consequence, the gap in the rate of productivity between large and