The future of business is an automated one. Seventy-eight percent of organizations are already implementing robotic process automation (RPA), and Gartner predicts 90% of large organizations globally will have adopted some form of RPA by 2022.
Given the operational benefits of automation, it’s no surprise organizations are flocking toward adopting it. However, it’s crucial these businesses also consider the human component of automation—that is, they invest in the tools and training needed to ensure employees are equipped to use the software effectively—if they want to make the most of their investment and position their teams for success.
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Considering our recent Global Office Worker Survey found that 63% of respondents consider skills related to automation critical for future career success, prioritizing education as part of automation initiatives is an opportunity employers can’t ignore.
At a minimum, employees need to be trained on automation so that they can keep up with increasingly digital workplaces. Training workers in automation also has the power to make their jobs more fulfilling and enables them to advance in their roles, which in turn creates a highly competitive team of talent capable of bringing the business into the future. Here’s how.
Automation Education Offers Workers More Agency Over Their Workflows
Naturally, there’s an immense benefit to the organization when their talent knows how to leverage automation. As mentioned, while investing in automation software will drive initial efficiencies across the organization, businesses can’t unlock automation’s full potential if they don’t also invest in training and education initiatives to accompany the technology. That’s because automation programs show greater returns when more individuals are equipped to use them; active employee participation in the program accelerates the use and scale of automation, propelling companies toward becoming fully automated enterprises.
More than understanding how to interact with the automation tools handed to them by leadership, today’s technical and business professionals must have the skills and expertise to identify processes that should be automated via RPA, and the ability to rapidly deploy the technology.
Enlisting employees in the automation feedback cycle helps overcome a common stumbling block that businesses encounter with their automation programs: scaling.
After the initial investment, it isn’t always clear to leadership and IT teams what to automate next, so when workers understand how automation’s potential can be applied to various activities, they can then identify processes within their personal workflows they’d like automated and either flag them to a developer or automate them themselves.
Automation education does not mean that employees must learn how to code or have other extensive technical training under their belt to use these tools. With the emergence of low- and no-code automations—which, as their names suggest, require little to no coding—employees can configure robots in ways that make the most sense to their workflows. (Not only does this offer employees more agency over their responsibilities, it also frees up IT teams and automation professionals, who would otherwise be fielding tickets to design these automations for their colleagues.) It is important that employees understand how automation benefits them—and how they can bring those benefits to life by creating their own software robots.
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Automation Education Makes Employees More Effective at Their Jobs
Our survey also found that 91% of the workers who trained in automation at some point in the past year believe that it has improved their job performance.
Employees can deploy software robots to work in the background or in tandem with them to fulfill the tedious or time-consuming activities within their roles—saving them time to focus on work that requires them to think critically and therefore be more engaged. As an added benefit, this increased engagement can counteract feelings of burnout that oftentimes accompany repeating the same tasks. In customer service, for example, agents can use software robots to source customer information for every incoming call so that they can focus on resolving customers’ queries instead of tracking down their information.
Employees can also leverage robots so that they complete their jobs more accurately; having software robots execute administrative activities like processing invoices eliminates the risk of human error when miscalculations or misplaced data occur.
Additionally, if workers aren’t burnt out completing repetitive tasks, they’re less likely to err with their other responsibilities—meaning teams won’t be held up on new projects down the line because they’re spending time correcting or redoing work.
Robust automation education also can make employees feel more secure in their current careers, so long as it emphasizes why automation doesn’t take jobs but enhances them. Fear of being replaced by automation is still prevalent in a lot of workers’ minds, so diffusing these fears upfront is essential for earning and retaining employees’ trust as automation initiatives take shape.
Automation Education Opens New Career Opportunities
Not only can automation training make employees more productive, but it also positions them to find more satisfaction within their careers. In addition to freeing them up to spend more time on the creative tasks that drive meaning from their roles, automation education can open new doors for employees to advance their careers. For example, LinkedIn’s 2021 jobs report highlights how AI professionals have become increasingly in demand, especially as the pandemic accelerated the field’s growth. As more organizations adopt these technologies, they’ll need internal stewards to maintain them, and advanced automation training programs can teach workers what they need to move into this market gap.
Employees are craving this opportunity for growth, too; our survey also found that many office workers currently feel stagnant in their roles, with 67% feeling like they’re constantly doing the same tasks repeatedly. Especially as employers face current mass resignations, they need to do all they can to make their talent feel valued within the business ecosystem.
Likewise, having automation as a fixture of the organization can be attractive to prospects looking for modern, innovative organizations that not only strive to move the business forward but also prioritize investments that will support its employees.
Where to Find Automation Training and Education Programs
Fortunately, as automation becomes commonplace in today’s businesses, there’s increasing availability of training and education programs to supplement its adoption—and individuals don’t need to wait until they enter to the workforce to take advantage of them. Our Academic Alliance is one such program helping to shape the future of work by educating and training the next generation of workers at the college level. Institutions that join the global RPA knowledge ecosystem are provided free courses, free automation software for students and educators, and the ability to network with the highly active community of global RPA professionals and users. The Alliance now includes more than 1,000 higher education institutions and workforce development organizations—including new alliance members the University of Florida, Loyola University of Maryland, and Bentley University, among others. The academy also offers free training courses for business users to begin their automation journeys.
While automation software is more commonly touted for its operational benefits, it also has the power to unlock employees’ professional potential and bring them into the future of work. If they haven’t already, many organizations are considering investing in automation technologies, and it’s time they invest in their workforce as well. By arming employees with automation education, employers will not only help their employees put automation to work to boost productivity but wield it as a force for change to usher in a future of possibility.
[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]