Companies investing in making work better: Outliers or Trendsetters?
purposeworks.substack.com
Over the last few years, I’ve noticed something unusual: some of my clients are starting significant efforts to improve the work experience of their employees - and they don’t even ask for a business case documenting the return on investment. The first one was a global healthcare company. Highly educated scientists in its R&D function wasted precious time filling out paper logs, tracking down equipment, and digging for data. Clearly, digitizing some of this low value work would generate tangible benefits not only for the company but also for its employees. But the team raising the issue with senior leadership was not hopeful that their project proposal would be accepted. As always, there were plenty of other projects asking for funding, and nobody could remember a project like this ever being funded. They were shocked when the executives provided a multi-million-dollar budget to fund the project. When we started working with the team, I assumed that they had to justify the investment by quantifying how much time the project would save. Shockingly, the project sponsor insisted that was unnecessary. “We know that we will save a lot of time, but that is not the most important thing. We are hiring very smart people, and it just does not make sense to waste their time performing manual tasks. Getting rid of this work will allow us to get more done and get to market faster.”
Companies investing in making work better: Outliers or Trendsetters?
Companies investing in making work better…
Companies investing in making work better: Outliers or Trendsetters?
Over the last few years, I’ve noticed something unusual: some of my clients are starting significant efforts to improve the work experience of their employees - and they don’t even ask for a business case documenting the return on investment. The first one was a global healthcare company. Highly educated scientists in its R&D function wasted precious time filling out paper logs, tracking down equipment, and digging for data. Clearly, digitizing some of this low value work would generate tangible benefits not only for the company but also for its employees. But the team raising the issue with senior leadership was not hopeful that their project proposal would be accepted. As always, there were plenty of other projects asking for funding, and nobody could remember a project like this ever being funded. They were shocked when the executives provided a multi-million-dollar budget to fund the project. When we started working with the team, I assumed that they had to justify the investment by quantifying how much time the project would save. Shockingly, the project sponsor insisted that was unnecessary. “We know that we will save a lot of time, but that is not the most important thing. We are hiring very smart people, and it just does not make sense to waste their time performing manual tasks. Getting rid of this work will allow us to get more done and get to market faster.”