In today's Work Matters, Thomas talks with Joe Spadaford, President of J Francis Consulting, about his experience implementing work design in financial services. Joe held senior leadership roles at Citibank, First National Bank of Chicago, First Chicago Trust Company, Axa, Computershare, and AST.

He shares the lessons learned when transforming large operating departments and organizations through motivational work design, and unpacks the indicators that demonstrate an organization would benefit from work design: poor performance, high-turnover, low customer satisfaction, and inability to scale.

Revealing the benefits of work design, Joe explains the key ingredients for a successful transformation: leadership commitment, cross-functional coordination and collaboration, and employee buy-in. He also discusses the evolving role of AI and HR in business and how each impacts the effectiveness of work design.

Joe then takes us on a typical implementation journey from start to finish: assessing the current state, defining objectives, forming a design team, piloting and refining the design, and full deployment. He concludes with detailing the results of a successful work design effort: higher employee engagement; reduced turnover; improved productivity; increased customer satisfaction; reduced costs; and freed-up time for managers.