July 20, 2026
Harvard Business Review recently published an article co-authored by Connie Hadley, Fellow at Questrom School of Business’s Institute for Leadership & Work, examining how a structured employee-listening process helped a major pharmaceutical company improve its frontline workforce and business performance.
The article outlines a six-step approach developed by Questrom’s Institute for Leadership & Work and the BCG Institute and applied to a roughly 100-person Patient Service Group. Through interviews, customized surveys, and focus groups, employees described feeling “behind the glass” – disconnected despite being deeply committed to the company’s mission, and a survey found that 63% were actively searching for another job.
Hadley explains that the company translated employee feedback into two pilot initiatives: expanding the window for patient refill reminder calls and introducing a clearer coaching framework.
Treated as measurable experiments rather than top-down mandates, the changes maintained medication adherence while giving employees greater autonomy, demonstrating how involving frontline workers in designing solutions can improve both employee engagement and organizational performance.
