Automation has several advantages it can confer upon businesses. This is reality. A ton of attention has been paid to the fact that staff productivity increases, errors and costs reduce, and staff have time to do work of increased value to the business. 

This is all well and good – for the business. However, what about the staff members themselves? What do they think about automation overall and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to be specific? 

Do away with the tedious 

Going by the Future of Work Survey 2020, in excess of two-thirds of Americans (67%) have a positive opinion with regards to automation, concurring with the statement, “I believe it could help me with activities and make my job more efficient.” In a Forbes Insight study a couple of years ago, 92% of businesses witnessed an improvement in staff satisfaction upon RPA’s deployment. And it wasn’t just a marginal improvement: in excess of half of (52%) stated staff satisfaction enhanced by 15% or more.” 

When questioned in the Future of Work survey what activities they would like help with, the people who took part most typically responded: 

• Responding to phone calls 
• Making confirmation calls 
• Sending follow-up emails 
• Finishing spreadsheets 
• Organization and filing 
• Keeping track of incoming data 
• Completing the same papers over and over again 
• Delivering reminder notices for payment 
• Tracking payments and completed job orders 

All of these things could be poster children for RPA and smart automation. 

Capability to leverage more human attributes 

Evidence is increasing that even though businesses may think well of the proverbial “higher-value work” that RPA frees staff up to do, the staff members themselves have a differing take on it. 

The Harvard Business Review specifies that critical to making RPA function from an organizational-cultural perspective boils down to developing a business model in which software robots (“bots”) and human staff members play a complementary role to one another. Machines perform tedious tasks. They will perennially be superior at those, will never get tired or lose focus, and can execute at speeds that humans are, for the most part, unable to accomplish. 

Humans, on the other hand, have the blessings of creativity, caring, empathy, intuition, and are capable of executing leaps of logic that programmed algorithms cannot. Such abilities cannot be “botsourced”, states the Harvard Business Review. 

Nearly a third (27%) of staff members surveyed for the Future of Work research stated automation would enable them to have more creativity, and an equivalent number specified it would enable them to concentrate on more longer-term strategic planning. These are debatably more compelling arguments from a staff member’s perspective as to the benefits of bots. 

As a kicker, more than 2/3rds of American staff members specify they would be more probable to apply to work for a business investing in new automation technologies than those that weren’t. 

Lifelong learning – an objective of millennials specifically 

One of the best methods to inject value to a staff member’s work life is through investing in career development through reskilling. Millennials, specifically value learning new knowledge, skills, and abilities. 

As a starting step, you require to ensure your staff members learn how to work with your bots.  

This alone will assist them to evolve their skills. As they build up their confidence, they can leverage Automation Anywhere Robotic Interface (AARI) to develop their own digital assistants to assist them with their jobs. They may even turn citizen developers to develop bots for others in their department or even the business as a whole. This not only drives your business forward on its digital transformation journey but takes your staff members along with you. 

Present day jobs for the most part, need four-year college degrees. Graduates of these programs don’t wish to perform the types of jobs that bots can do. Several staff members spend hours of their days on work well below their knowledge, education, and skill levels. This is why going by the 2019 Deloitte Global Millennial Survey, only 4/10ths of millennial staff members are “highly satisfied” in their jobs. To fulfil and retain staff members, businesses are rethinking employment. 

In a latest Deloitte survey, 61% of executives stated they were actively developing jobs centred around artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. They’re making up completely new job types that don’t exist currently. Indeed, a milestone research by the World Economic Forum in 2016 discovered that 65% of children going into primary school today will be employed into jobs that don’t currently exist. 

RPA can assist you get ahead of the curve – and improve staff satisfaction – by contemplating about what these new jobs will be today. 

What’s good for staff is good for the business today 

Going by Gartner, global Robotic Process Automation software revenue will be almost $1.9 billion in 2021, an appreciation of 19.5% from 2020. And even regardless of the economic uncertainty created by the pandemic, Gartner still expects that the RPA market will increase at double-digit rates through 2024. 

At these growth percentages, you may wish to leverage RPA in two ways. Do good for the business, sure, improve productivity, reduce errors, cut costs, the works. But think of your staff members, too. How can you leverage RPA to improve their satisfaction? You’ll do for yourself and for them, a big favour.