Anecdotal: consultancy gig in the 90's, when you could still smoke in the building. My boss shmoozed their bosses, I spent most of my days in the smoking room talking to random employees. After a week we presented a report that was hailed as "brilliantly insightful" and the client was amazed at how we'd managed to grasp the problems the company was facing in such a short time, and come up with brilliant, workable, solutions.

Literally what you said: getting paid to tell management what every employee knows and has been trying to tell them for years.