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During the past two years, increased attention has been given to work flexibility. Employers and employees have come to terms with the implications of remote or hybrid working and what this means for their lives.
Yet flexibility is only a part of the story. While the old Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 structure might have waned, there’s another factor that’s just as important: meaningfulness.
Having work that staff find meaningful to undertake is vital, especially when it comes to recruiting and retaining the best and brightest. Those who find themselves in dead-end positions or delegated tasks of low perceived value are unlikely to stay for long.
Pause for a moment and think about your current role. What proportion of it do you consider to be meaningful? How much is mundane? How much is actually of low value?
Realistically, there are bound to be some tasks that are tedious to complete. They might be compiling monthly reports or processing seemingly endless work orders. Perhaps it’s following chains of approval or extracting details from a database.
The problem is that your senior managers may see things very differently. The tasks that irk you are still likely to be adding value to your organisation’s bottom line and so remain essential.
So, what’s the solution? How can meaningfulness be enhanced while at the same time all essential work is completed? The first step is to be aware that the disparity exists in the first place.
In a positive sign, increasing numbers of employers are conducting regular staff sentiment surveys to better understand the mindset of employees. Such surveys (usually anonymous) can give valuable insights into issues such as the prevalence of meaningful work.
This, in turn, can encourage management teams to develop initiatives that create a more meaningful work environment. Unfortunately, however, this is not always an easy thing to achieve.
According to a recent report from PwC it is “rarely second nature for leaders to focus on making jobs fulfilling.”
The report says that doing so requires “deep empathy on the part of managers and the ability to translate the company’s overall purpose into specific actions and behaviours, so that employees can see how their work contributes to that purpose”.
This can often be easier said than done, but that shouldn’t deter managers from trying. It’s even more important at a time when finding and retaining good staff is particularly challenging.
One tactic that can help to improve the proportion of work that staff consider to be meaningful is to free them from repetitive and mundane tasks through automation. Deploying tools that can complete these tasks without the need for human intervention can allow staff to focus on more value-adding and meaningful activities.
The proportion of a staff member’s role that can be automated will of course vary, but it could be higher than you might think. According to consultancy firm McKinsey, as much as 25% to 46% of current work in Australia could be automated by 2030.
That’s a big shift, and one that’s likely to have a profound impact on how many employees spend their working days. They will find themselves freed up to focus on new challenges and add value to their organisation in more creative, strategic, and fulfilling ways.
The result could be new product ideas, better customer service and – most importantly – more satisfied staff engaged in meaningful work.
Consider the difference automation could make within your organisation.
What is the best approach to take? Which automation technologies and tools will have the greatest impact and drive the best possible efficiencies?
Achieving effective Intelligent Business Practices can seem like a somewhat daunting task. Being unsure where to start, the tools to use, and what benefits to expect, can result in everything remaining in the ‘too hard’ basket.
