Every seat that is filled in your office or spot filled along your line is filled by a human; a human worker with human skills. Somehow, over time, it seems that our businesses have lost sight of the fact that each and every employee that walks through the door and receives a paycheck has innate (and learned) abilities that allow them to function as more than just another piece of the task-crunching puzzle.
If you want your business to keep up with the competition, you’re going to have to consider redefining work within your company. Redefining work means pivoting and shifting your employees’ time, effort, and attention from single tasks to more complex roles that identify and address issues and opportunities.
In order to redefine work for your company, you have to realize where the difference is made—and for most companies, it’s the front lines. According to a recent study by Deloitte, Moving from Better to Best, “the work that typically offers the potential for differentiation—is no longer routine or even predictable.” Consumer demands are changing rapidly, technology is improving daily, and there are a million different avenues for consumers to interact with companies. Therefore, companies have to train and allow employees to think quickly, exercise their creativity, and push innovation if they want to be able to respond to the demands of the economy.
Much to the surprise of many corporate leaders, creating changes to employees roles does not require a complete overhaul of the company. In fact, it is suggested by experts that the best way to “get an edge is to play on the edge.” To translate, that means you don’t have to break down the entire core of a business in order to institute improvements. Instead, you can focus on small areas that directly interact with the outside first and then build the improvements of your company from there.
The key to making any method of redefining work possible is to always be ready to change. You cannot redefine the roles of your employees, keep those new roles stagnant, and then expect to see big results. The idea of seeking new contexts is one that was introduced in order to help businesses maintain a competitive edge when redefining the roles of their workers. In seeking new contexts, a business identifies the data, material, and technology that matters to their business and then chooses to build workers’ roles and company changes around that information. This method helps to keep things fresh around the workplace and ensures that businesses are changing what really matters.
As you begin the process of redefining work within your business, remember your employees are more capable than their current roles lead on. And, they want to do more for your business. When you give them the power to do more, big things will happen. The bottom line: changing the roles within your company can change your company. How you change those roles, however, depends on your individual employees and the information you collect from your consumers.