MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Redefining Work for New Value: The Next Opportunity

Redesigning jobs should be viewed not as an end goal, but as a process that enables work itself to be redefined so that the workforce creates new value.

The nature of work is evolving in two complementary directions. In one direction, managers are redesigning jobs to take advantage of new opportunities to automate workflow processes. Their aim: transform how workers execute tasks in order to boost efficiencies and reduce costs. At the same time, some managers are redefining work to take advantage of new capacity freed up by job redesign. With work redefinition, work is no longer simply about task execution; it’s about creating new sources of value for customers and the business. Although redesigning jobs and redefining work are both integral to long-term strategy, our research shows that too many companies are focused primarily on the former. Without an overriding strategy of redefining work, workers represent cost savings rather than freed capacity to create new value for the business or the customer.