Question

■Case 4-B: Push the Magic Button

When working on mind-numbing and monotonous projects, wouldn’t it be great to have a magic button you could push to get someone else to do that boring, time-consuming stuff? At Pfizer, that “magic button” is a reality for a large number of employees. As a global pharmaceutical company, Pfizer is con- tinually looking for ways to help employees be more efficient and effective. The company’s senior director of organizational effectiveness found that the “Harvard MBA staff we hired to develop strategies and innovate were instead Googling and making PowerPoints.” Indeed, internal studies conducted to find out just how much time its valuable talent was spending on menial tasks was startling. The average Pfizer employee was spending 20 percent to 40 percent of his or her time on support work (creating documents, typing notes, doing research, manipulating data, scheduling meetings) and only 60 per- cent to 80 percent on knowledge work (strategy, innova- tion, networking, collaborating, critical thinking). And the problem wasn’t just at lower levels. Even the highest-level employees were affected. Take, for instance, David Cain, an executive director for global engineering. He enjoys his job—assessing environmental real estate risks, managing facilities, and controlling a multimillion-dollar budget. But he didn’t so much enjoy having to go through spread- sheets and put together presentations. Now, however, with Pfizer’s “magic button,” those tasks are passed off to individuals outside the organization. Just what is this “magic button”? Originally called the Office of the Future (OOF), the renamed PfizerWorks allows employees to shift tedious and time-consuming tasks with the click of a single button on their computer desktop. They describe what they need on an online form, which is then sent to one of two Indian service-outsourc- ing firms. When a request is received, a team member in India calls the Pfizer employee to clarify what’s needed and by when. The team member then e-mails back a cost specification for the requested work. If the Pfizer employee decides to proceed, the costs involved are charged to the employee’s department. About this unique arrangement, Cain said that he relishes working with what he prefers to call his “personal consulting organization.” The number 66,500 illustrates just how beneficial PfizerWorks has been for the company. That’s the number of work hours estimated to have been saved by employees who’ve used PfizerWorks. What about Joe Cain’s experi- ences? When he gave the Indian team a complex project researching strategic actions that worked when consoli- dating company facilities, the team put the report together in a month, something that would have taken him six months to do alone. He says, “Pfizer pays me not to work tactically, but to work strategically.”

CASE STUDY QUESTIONS?

4-16. What type of departmentalization is evident in the employee grouping of PfizerWorkst? Cite specific examples to support your point of view.

4-17. What authority implications- good or bad- does this approach have?

4-18. Refer to “Delegating and the Steps in Practicing the Skill” to describe what Pfizer had to accomplish when setting up and implementing the teams at the Indian service-outsourcing firms supporting PfizerWorks?

Answer 1

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1.The departmentalization that is evident in the grouping of Pfizer Works is the separation between the employee’s menial tasks and knowledgeable tasks. In this case it states that employees have to spend too much time on things that may not be as important but are needed to help support the employees. This is taking time away from employees to be able to work on things in their role that requires collaborative efforts such as critical thinking, networking, etc. to help a business grow. Ultimately the departmentalization was created to help give employees extra time on things that need more attention

2.The good implications this approach provides, is that it helps employees focus on putting menial tasks to the side. This will help employees focus more on developing things that may benefit to their business and role rather than not having all the time to do so. When using this approach, it can really help employees focus on spending as much time on working on things that can help development with no setbacks. The bad thing about using this approach is that the tasks given to other people will come back to the employees in a different style or format that doesn’t cater to every employee. This can make it hard for some employees to make sure that they fully understand their task because not all of it was done by them.

3.When setting up this arrangement, Pfizer had to accomplish a lot in order for this service to turn out to be beneficial to the firm. Pfizer delegated the tasks and how much time was spent on each task that wasn’t as important. This was then used as motivation to implement the team’s Indian outsourcing firm to help with the tasks that were taking up employee’s time. In the end, by using the outsourcing firm it helped the company save many hours to make it possible to spend as much time as possible on tasks that was more important.

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