What's Up with Tech?
Uncovering Gray Work: Maya on QuickBase’s Efficiency Research, Dynamic Work Management, and Industry Solutions
Is the hidden workload in your daily routine silently sabotaging your productivity? We're unpacking the concept of "gray work" with Maya from QuickBase, exposing those sneaky tasks like chasing down information and managing redundant systems that drain your efficiency. Maya breaks down the findings from QuickBase's Gray Work Index research, shedding light on the hidden culprits of workplace inefficiency and revealing strategies to combat them effectively.
From healthcare providers overwhelmed by paperwork to construction firms bogged down by compliance requirements, we're tackling the administrative nightmares that lead to burnout across various industries. With real-world examples from companies like Consigli and Daifuku, we'll explore how dynamic work management—centralizing information, enhancing connectivity, and automating tasks—can transform your workflow. Tune in to discover how you can reclaim your day and make technology work for you, not against you.
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel
Is the hidden workload in your daily routine silently sabotaging your productivity? We're unpacking the concept of "gray work" with Maya from QuickBase, exposing those sneaky tasks like chasing down information and managing redundant systems that drain your efficiency. Maya breaks down the findings from QuickBase's Gray Work Index research, shedding light on the hidden culprits of workplace inefficiency and revealing strategies to combat them effectively.
From healthcare providers overwhelmed by paperwork to construction firms bogged down by compliance requirements, we're tackling the administrative nightmares that lead to burnout across various industries. With real-world examples from companies like Consigli and Daifuku, we'll explore how dynamic work management—centralizing information, enhancing connectivity, and automating tasks—can transform your workflow. Tune in to discover how you can reclaim your day and make technology work for you, not against you.
More at https://linktr.ee/EvanKirstel
Hey everybody, diving into the world of great work, the reason for our business inefficiency today, with a true expert in the world of work, maya from QuickBase, how are you?
Speaker 2:Hey Evan, I'm doing well. How are you? I'm excited for great work.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining, really excited, a topic that's so important to all aspects of business, efficiency and operations and intelligence. Before that, maybe introduce yourself and for those who aren't familiar, who's QuickBase?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, it's great to be here and talk about some research that is very near and dear to my heart.
Speaker 2:I am on the product marketing team at QuickBase, based just outside of New York City, and I've spent my entire career here in New York City and also just marketing tech, marketing software, marketing tools to businesses to help them solve their problems and to achieve their goals, which is really what brought me to QuickBase.
Speaker 2:A lot of what I do is what we call storytelling, but bringing insights into that, which I really believe go hand in hand, because in order to tell a story, in order to connect with our customers and with the market in a really engaging and relevant way, we have to know what's keeping them up at night, we have to know what their goals are and what they're feeling, which is really what led me to the Gray Work Index, and our entire team is working to really better understand our customers and what they're going through. So, you know, at QuickBase, we help teams manage large-scale projects and operations, all so that they can be more productive. You know our mission here is to maximize their impact, help customers be more productive, you know, with our platform, and so a lot of what I do is trying to understand what can make them more productive, what is getting in the way of that, and so that's really what brought me here today and what I've been focused on at QuickBase.
Speaker 1:Well, it's wonderful to have this discussion. Let's start with some definitions. What is gray work? What's a good definition? Because people have different ideas of what it means.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny because even people who haven't heard about gray work, the minute you start talking about it everyone's like yes, yes, I have that and you know, I've always felt it throughout my career. There just wasn't really a name for it. And so I would say gray work isn't new necessarily. I think it's gotten worse, but the definition, as we have been calling it, is new.
Speaker 2:You know the simplest way and I think we can, all you know, just think about what is going on in our daily lives and we can kind of point to that gray work it's all the hidden work that you need to do to do your job. Simply it's. You know you kind of have your job in terms of what's on your job description, the work you need to get done, the impact you want to show. Gray work is all the extra steps that you have to do to get that done. So you know it might look different for different people across different industries, but think about the times you're having to chase down information. You're trying to find that one data point. You're looking across spreadsheets and you know different software systems trying to find what you need. Or you're manually having to input information or data into one spreadsheet or one system because it's not speaking to the other one that you're having to deal with and you're kind of jumping between tools, something I think you know as someone who works remotely and works with people you know around the world just having to chase people down, having to find that person and get that update from them or get information waiting for them to respond. So if you think about all of those little things that get in the way of the actual work, that is what we define as gray work A lot of times.
Speaker 2:You know, an important piece of the definition of gray work is, you know it's a result of the work that we're doing, and just piece of the definition of gray work is, you know it's a result of the work that we're doing and just sort of the nature of work we do today. But a lot of times gray work is caused by technology, by the you know software, by the processes that are in place, and oftentimes they're meant to help you but they're slowing you down. And so I sort of you know something I like to remind people about gray work is it can be small, it could be something that you're like ah, this will just take me a few minutes, you know, but they all add up and what we're seeing is that gray work is taking up a huge, huge chunk of time for people, just a huge chunk of their days, and so that's really how we define gray work.
Speaker 1:Really great definition describes about a third of my day. Now I can only imagine multiplying that by a thousand employees. But what inspired QuickBase to conduct the gray work index research? I mean, you're a vendor, you're a supplier of solutions to this problem, but how did you get the big idea for the gray work index?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, as you mentioned, we've all felt gray work and what we're realizing just in. You know what we heard from customers. And just you know, in our day to day and speaking with customers and seeing why they were turning to QuickBase, we were learning that it was so pervasive. We were learning that, you know, I don't think anyone is immune to gray work.
Speaker 2:This is such a widespread issue and we wanted to just get at the heart of it. You know, I think in order to truly solve a problem, you have to understand its root causes. And so, for the gray work index, we really wanted to just better understand, you know, the reasons for that gray work, better understand what's working, what's not, where are some of those barriers and how customers are feeling. All of that is so that we could pass those learnings on to our customers. You know it's easy to kind of sit here and sell a solution to a sort of theoretical problem, but if we can get specific about, like, we know you customer are challenged by this thing and then and that thing is not only hurting productivity but that that inefficiency is actually impacting revenue, it's actually potentially harming the safety processes you have in place for your employees. It's actually impacting employee satisfaction and people are frustrated. We really wanted to get at the heart of those issues so that we can tell our story, and tell the QuickBase story and our solution in a way that felt very relevant and very specific to those problems. And so it's an annual research study.
Speaker 2:This year we were able to do a lot more with it. We were able to dig into specific industries to get that specificity, and we also wanted to include AI because, you know, as we'll talk about, ai is, you know, being framed as a way to eliminate a lot of that gray work, and we wanted to kind of get a pulse on what are customers thinking about AI and how might they be using it. And so, you know, at the end of the day, I sort of looked at Gray Workup. Let's go in and try to just understand the state of work, the state of productivity. Let's try to get a few of the details around. What are people spending their time on? You know what's frustrating, what's actually working, all of that. So we can, you know, pull together the takeaways, really analyze the data, try to find patterns and ultimately, you know, sort of on an optimistic front, try to find opportunities to improve productivity and pass those learnings on to our customers.
Speaker 1:Wow, great insights there and give us an idea of who participated in the Gray Work Index research and you know how did you find them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. We ran a quantitative study so we wanted to send the survey out. We talked to 2000 people in the US, as well as the United Kingdom and Ireland, and you know, as I mentioned, it was really important for us to dig into different industries. So we talked to customers across construction, manufacturing, state and local government, solar and a bunch of other industries that you can kind of see in the report, and we really just, you know, we wanted to understand where Gray Work and some of their challenges may be kind of universal and kind of stretch across. But we wanted to really dig into their industries and also understand, you know, what they're being asked to do and how it's kind of, how it's all going with the technology they have in place. So we wanted to reach kind of that wide range of customers that you know we found have found value with QuickBase and we wanted to just better understand those people.
Speaker 1:Well done, and let's talk about some of the root causes behind the emergence of gray work. What did you find in the survey?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely it's. You know, I went in, I tried to go into research with a sort of judge-free zone of let's just keep an open mind and see what comes, and I did go in expecting a few things. You know, just as you've mentioned, we've all experienced great work and I kind of anticipated a few takeaways. But what was interesting is I was still surprised with some of the takeaways. I think seeing numbers to things you may kind of know in your gut are true, seeing that a majority of respondents we spoke with found that it's harder than ever to be productive in their day-to-day. I found that really that was sort of the first big takeaway of more than half of people think it's more productive to more, that it's harder to be productive. I thought that was sort of like the big sort of foundational piece and we wanted to, you know, dig in why, we wanted to understand why that might be the case. I think a few of the big takeaways for me include, you know, and again something we've probably all felt too many tools. I think you know we're all sold on this, like there's an app for this and software for this and a tool for this and that's all. That's all really great because those things solve real problems we have in our day to day. But what we found is actually nine out of 10 people we spoke with felt overwhelmed just by the amount of software solutions they had to use daily. So if you think about in a single day what you're switching between and you're having to log in and do security authorization to get into some app, nine out of 10 felt they were overwhelmed. These are the tools that are meant to increase productivity. So I found that to be really interesting.
Speaker 2:We heard a lot and there's some numbers in the report. We heard a lot and there's some some numbers in the report. We heard a lot about just the amount of time people are spending, um, you know, chasing down information, or just the amount of time they're spending doing work that they feel is not meaningful work, and I think that's interesting. You know you sign on every day you get to work and you're hoping that a majority of your day is spent on driving impact, and to see that so many people felt that you know hours and hours of their day is being spent on what they consider not meaningful, that was really interesting.
Speaker 2:You know, we heard about software solutions that don't talk to each other, making project information sharing really difficult. But I think one of the things that I mentioned to you you know, some things really really did surprise me there was one stat that stood out. You know, some things really really did surprise me. There was one stat that stood out. We asked people how confident are they in in the accuracy of of their project related information? So you know the information, the data, all of this the information they're putting in and sharing.
Speaker 2:We found that only 10 percent of respondents said they were extremely confident. So that kind of blew my mind, because we're saying that 90% of people have some level of doubt in the information. I mean they're making decisions based on this information, they're hoping to grow their business based on that information and there is some doubt in that information for 90% of people. And so there's a lot in there some kind of validate.
Speaker 2:What you might think some might surprise you, like they did for me. But I think you know, one of the big takeaways for me is that things seem to be getting worse and there's all these productivity hacks and people are creating habits to try to improve productivity. It's become such an important conversation across our culture and across businesses and yet you know to be doing all of that and for productivity to kind of stay the same, that's one thing, but to see numbers that indicate that that feeling of productivity is getting worse despite all that investment, despite all that focus, that was kind of one of the big aha moments for us to see that this is not going in the right direction. We've got to fix it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's a real imperative. And you talk a little bit about different industries and how pervasive the problem is in different industries. I do a lot of the healthcare tech world and it's just diabolical in healthcare, leading to a lot of burnout not just physicians, nurses, but staff and support. But what say you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure I like the word of diabolical Also, just like paperwork. I can imagine care too, just the amount of paperwork you know this is. This is definitely a challenge across industries. We've seen that. We have found that some industries are more prone to gray work and kind of these productivity killers, and so they have shared characteristics. I think you'll you'll see that within health care you know there's a lot have shared characteristics. I think you'll see that within healthcare there's a lot of shared characteristics.
Speaker 2:But these industries and the businesses within them are having to deal with very complex problems, problems that are projects that involve a lot of different stakeholders, a lot of information, a lot of information and oftentimes that paperwork, oftentimes the sort of manual you know, filling out of a form manual, capturing data, and a lot of times what we're seeing is that they're having to connect digital and physical worlds and you would think by now, with all the technology we have access to that, that is pretty seamless and easy. And it's not what. With all the technology we have access to that, that is pretty seamless and easy. And it's not what we're finding in a lot of these industries that we work with is they have so much information to capture and to share. And they have these massive projects that are tied to really tight timelines and yet they're really struggling sharing that information, connecting people, let's say, in the back office, to the field or on a construction site. And so you know, there are some shared characteristics that we've seen and those are a lot of the companies in those industries that we found success with. So I mean just a couple of examples to paint the picture Within construction, we work with Consigli. Couple of examples to paint the picture Within construction, we work with Consigli, and we talk to them a lot about just OSHA, their OSHA compliance and these really stringent compliance standards they have to adhere to and safety orientation.
Speaker 2:And that for Consigli, you know, safety on their job sites is huge, that is so important to them, and they go out of their way, you know, to try to keep everybody safe and make sure that orientation is done seamlessly. And so what was happening is, you know, in order to go through that orientation and make sure that all the documentation was right, you know people were having to fill out paper forms. People were having to, you know, attend these orientations and sign physical safety documentation. All of that was really really hard to manage. And then there's the added complexity of, you know, safety lessons changing and what is needed from OSHA changing. You know whether it was dependent on the actual job site or just some of those standards changing over time so it was really impossible to standardize. You think about just all of the paperwork involved, all of the actual management, possibly that gray work of just having to create and recreate and recreate the process in order to make sure everybody is safe, and so, um, you know, just kind of trying to bring all of that together. That was kind of one one example for us that that stood out. Um and uh.
Speaker 2:Consigli is a great example of someone who has been able to completely streamline that, that OSHA, um, you know, compliance process and keep people safe.
Speaker 2:Um, and so there's, you know, other examples. We've worked with Daifuku on the manufacturing side of just change management and having to deal with maintenance of equipments and communicating information to many different stakeholders. But you'll kind of see, across these industries and many others, some shared themes of there's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of information and data that you're trying to get out to people. There's a lot of data that you're trying to capture and you're trying to access in real time and you know doing that can be a full-time job and yet that is just the sort of step to get to the full-time job. And so you know, those are just kind of a couple of examples. That landed a bit on the specific industry. But you know, within healthcare, within all the other industries, you know everybody's got their version of this and it really can differ just in terms of the. You know what needs to get done in those industries producing great work.
Speaker 1:But moving to something called dynamic work management, which you talk a lot about. What is that? How is it different from traditional work management approaches?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and there's only two things that we're defining here. So there's a pop quiz. It's really just these two. But dynamic work management. But you know, dynamic work management it's our solution. It's what we call managing work as it is today, not how it used to be.
Speaker 2:So you know, everybody kind of knows about traditional work management or project management. We found that, you know, traditional tools are solving the problems of years ago. They're not considering what work is like today. And you know we talk a lot about this because work today has changed. Work today is more dynamic, is more multi-stakeholder, is spread across the world and people are working on their phones, people are working at an office. You know work is more dynamic and there needs to be a solution to solve for that. And so you know, when we, when we think about what companies that do dynamic work management really well, they have less of that hidden gray work that we talked about. That slows you down.
Speaker 2:With dynamic work management, technology is actually helping you. Technology is actually helping you. It is centralizing information. It is making that work easier and more connected and more automated than what was the case before. And so you know again, I sort of think of it as real life examples that we're probably all going to feel today.
Speaker 2:But when you're managing dynamic work well, you know, through dynamic work management you're finding the data that you need right away. You're finding that information and sharing that information with people spread all over the world. No matter where they are, they can instantly access what you're trying to share with them. You're able to easily collaborate, You're able to kind of see those changes and those updates in real time. And I think when you're managing dynamic work really well, you're able to see it all in one place. You're not having to switch between different systems and you know. That's sort of how we define dynamic work management. It's letting you, you know, as an employee that has so much on their plate, it is letting you see, connect and control your most complex projects, and so you're able to kind of bring it all together into one view and you're able to really be the master of what you're looking at and the changes that you need to make in order to keep your projects on time and successful.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. The report's out there and what's the response been? What's some of the feedback been to customers and the wider community?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think you know, like we started this conversation, it's people are getting it, people. It's resonating with people that say, you know, oftentimes I didn't know there was a name for this, but this is what I deal with and I think it's probably very helpful for some people to be validated, to know that a lot of the challenges they deal with, others are also feeling those pains and then actually there's a solution for it. So I would say it's opened up a lot of great conversations for, ok, now that we've named this thing and now that we know we're dealing with it, how can we start to solve it? How can we start to identify the gray work that we can try to eliminate?
Speaker 2:I think one of the most exciting things the team worked really hard on was actually creating an interactive tool to see, you know, where do you as a company kind of fall in the gray work index. So you know, we kind of wanted to pull together our view, based on the research, based on the data that we got from customers, what that index is kind of looking like. You know we want to be able to track that year over year. But we also want to give power to, to the customers, you know, to take this, the questions in this interactive tool, and see where they land on the index, and so that was a really exciting thing. We're seeing really great response to that.
Speaker 2:That's something anyone can go on and take just to kind of answer some of the questions and see where they fall and see how much gray work that they're having to deal with on a day-to-day basis and where they might rank not only kind of at a high level but also within their industry. Where do they sort of fall, you know, among the average? So that's been really fun to see and I think it's step one of a conversation. That's been. The most exciting thing for me with this research is getting to talk to Consigli, talk to Daifuku, getting to talk to customers to say here's what we found, here's, you know, what we've kind of uncovered. Now let's talk about it. Let's talk about how we might eliminate some gray work. I think that's been that's been really fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sounds intriguing. And what do you think as we look towards the next year? Do you, you know, maybe same time next year, as you look towards the next survey, do you think things are getting better or worse? Or is that too controversial a question out there? We'll have to see where the data lands.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I would love to say better, I would love to even say stable, which is probably not shooting for the stars, I think, the more you know. I'm hoping that this research opens up some of those conversations and for people to look to solutions like QuickBase that can help to eliminate that gray work. I'm hoping people kind of get fed up. I don't want there to be a complacency of oh well, this is good enough, it's okay that I'm spending hours and hours on this thing, that's fine. I'm hoping people wake up a bit and see that there is a solution. I think I don't know. I'm hoping people wake up a bit and see that there is a solution. I think I don't know. I don't think I can share a prediction for next year. We'll certainly run this and we'll be able to kind of share those year over year results. But I think a few things I'm keeping my eye on is I think you know we think about in our personal lives how critical mobile has become and how we can do everything. We can order anything and do everything from our phones. But that's not necessarily the case for a lot of industries and you know, I'm really excited to see how mobile catches up for people on a manufacturing shop floor or on site at a construction site. So I'm excited to see how mobile catches up site. So I'm excited to see how mobile catches up.
Speaker 2:I'm also really, really interested in AI and how that. You know how, as people continue or start to implement AI to eliminate gray work, you know, is it going to solve more than or is it going to create more challenges in the way that we've seen technology do at times. So I think with AI, it is not this one size fits all. If you just bring AI in, things are going to get better. I think customers are going to have to get really thoughtful about how they're bringing AI in to improve their business, and so that's going to be really interesting next year to see as AI has become more prevalent in some of these software solutions. How much has it helped, how much hasn't it helped? So I think that's going to be key and I think you know these are kind of big things for us that we really focus on.
Speaker 2:With QuickBase and in terms of just our priority with with how we speak with customers, I think the simplification is going to be one. We've seen this sort of. I think it's a tipping point of the amount of tools, the amount of investment on software and, I think, this idea that companies are going to want to consolidate and simplify and why are we going into 10 different systems to make one decision, really bringing it all together? And so you know, this is really where QuickBase focuses and eliminating that gray work and doing all of those things I mentioned and bringing AI in a really cool way of customizing that solution and building apps easily to solve those problems and building apps easily to solve those problems. And so it's going to be really just interesting to see how customers sort of respond and use our platform in really creative ways.
Speaker 2:But then also, how is kind of the market at large, how is Graywork kind of going for them and are they able to sort of identify those root causes of gray work and find ways to solve them? So I'd like to be optimistic. I'm optimistic by nature, so I think that you know, hopefully people are going to say enough is enough and try to find solutions, because there's just so much more potential out there for productivity. There's just so much more potential out there for productivity, improving revenue, and it feels like we're spending so much time on not meaningful work and that's really slowing us down.
Speaker 1:You're here. Well, that's very well said. On that note, everyone should go download the Great Work Index report Really interesting reading and follow QuickBase on social. They put out some great content, very educational, very informative, like the Gray Work Index, and worth your time. Thanks, maya. Thanks so much for sharing your insights and the team's insights on this important topic.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, evan. Great to talk to you, really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Likewise Take care everyone. Thanks so much, Bye.