"Increasing efficiency" is mostly a theater meant to demonstrate effort during low/no growth periods and without viable products in development to validate such dynamic.
That really depends on the business. I worked with a manufacturing client a few years back, and millisecond process improvements could translate into millions of dollars increased annual profits. They manufactured parts that would sell for about $0.75 a piece at razor thin margins.
It eventually occurred to me that we didn't have to, because the team was the mechanism for automating those workloads. They couldn't tell us they weren't that important, so the easiest option was to just talk about automation while paying us a bunch to keep troubleshooting the gross scripts.
Again - that is totally fine, as long as you know what's going on. Then you can make a clear decision around whether you want to stay.