Process optimisation as BAU for all collaborators
On the “Workplace Stack Exchange” – a question/answer website for web users – a topic raised a lot of views and reactions and even led to some newspaper articles. The question was: “Is it unethical not to tell my employer I’ve automated my job”.
The person who raised this question works fully from home and has to perform some basic data integration and system maintenance. After one year, he had analysed all the possible bugs in the system and totally automated the job. What previously took 1 month, takes now 10 minutes.
His question to his fellow net surfers is if he should tell his employer or not. If he keeps hiding the automation, he has a moral dilemma; if he reveals it, chances are he loses his job in very short term.
While most reactions focus on this dilemma, I’d like to share some thoughts on the essence of the affair for the enterprise, which is not if it’s being cheated (because the job for which a salary is paid is done correctly) but concerns process optimisation.
In this case, the collaborator is paid to ensure production and maintenance tasks, which he performs correctly. He was not asked to improve the systems nor to automate them. By taking this initiative, the collaborator showed an entrepreneur’s attitude. Thanks to this attitude, the systems are more reliable, which is a clear advantage for the enterprise; and the collaborator freed most of his time, which is an advantage …. for whom? This is where the problem arises: who must have the benefits of this initiative?
In a vertical vision of society, with managers at the top and collaborators at the bottom, it’s the job of the manager to instruct team members what to do. It’s that role that explains why managers earn more and have more decision power in the enterprise. This may be fairly successful in a stable environment where higher education may perhaps ensure a broader vision on production and a better comprehension of processes, giving the manager the ability to instruct passive collaborators to execute the work. But in a changing world, this organisation is insufficient and becomes more and more hazardous. The world changes constantly, programs that once were state of the art, lose rapidly in efficiency. New comers on the market benefit from superior technology at a fraction of production costs, without the burden to adapt past inefficient technologies. If an enterprise wants to keep its market share, it cannot leave the thinking and decision to a handful of managers. It has to involve all collaborators.
In the present case, the manager didn’t had the vision on the process. He didn’t even understand the capacities of his collaborator, which is even worse. One could object that it’s because of the homeworking that the manager wasn’t aware the collaborator had fully automated the job. But that would be overlooking the fact that collaborators can simulate hard work just in front of the managers’ eyes. Anybody having worked in a large company knows how to fool a manager. Showing an excel sheet on the computer screen is often enough.
In this fast moving world, we cannot satisfy ourselves with business and process knowledge managed by a few leaders. We need to constantly improve processes at all levels and for that, we need power. The key to power is the freedom to take initiatives and the possibility to improve everyone’s technological knowledge. This implies a different work organisation and consequently a different role and remuneration model. A company will always hire people to get a defined job done. But the definition of the job is based on the past, not on the future needs. How is a company going to remunerate a collaborator that sticks to the job, compared to a collaborator that ensures production but, through his vision, prepares for the future?
Gilles Cardoen, financial & business analyst