should I really put that much effort into this? I'm curious as to what others do with these situations
Depends on the company and how you perceive them as treating their employees.
Many years ago, my first job in electronics was doing repairs for a comms manufacturer. Some of the kit was based on a Z80 micro and we had a test tool which basically replaced the Z80 and ran a memory map of the hardware, printing the result on paper tape. Clever thing, but a pain to use so I designed a better replacement using a home computer (Amstrad CPC464). This one was better since it used a terminal for a menu-driven interface (the original used a keypad to select tests) but, significantly, allowed you to repeat operations so you could waggle things at the same time and test for flaky connections. It would simulate any Z80 operation and additionally let you drive specific pins to resolve short/opens, etc.
I demoed it one day to my boss, and on the basis of that was given the go ahead to convert to using the real product as the tester (that is, instead of the computer the program ran on the comms hardware - with a wirewrap plugin on its expansion bus - and interaction was via a terminal). Quite cool because at one point I had a Z80 emulator debugging a Z80 simulator testing a Z80 product.
For that I got an ex-gratia payment of £600 for two such devices, which was fine by me - half the fun was in doing it, and the other half was in it making my job easier. The company benefited by increased productivity and saving on buying another expensive simulator for other repair techs.
It was quite an open and friendly company and I spent some time around at development talking to the engineers there. At some point, on the basis of having made this simulator and writing them a DBIII app (the purpose of which I can't remember now) they offered me a position as a junior development engineer, which I naturally took their arm off in accepting.
Doing that stuff essentially for free (the payments and payoffs came after, and weren't expected) got me started on the ladder, I am sure, but also moving in the right circles got me known to those with a say in things (and, incidentally, led to me meeting my current girlfriend).
In your particular situation (which I am afraid I haven't been able to decipher fully!) I think it depends on your relationship with the company. Is it your friend or do you perceive it as walking all over you? One way to look at it is that you would be not just giving them ideas on which to make money but increasing the likelihood of keeping your job. Companies tend to do this sort of exercise when they realise their current product lineup isn't selling as well as it used to, and have run out of ideas to monetize, so coming up with something is to your benefit if it keeps them going. And, as above, you should get to be recognised better than just being another employee number, which could lead to better things later. Just don't count on it.