Automation has the potential to battle workplace dissatisfaction. We hear a lot about “quiet quitting” and “acting your wage,” or doing the bare minimum at your job without leaving. At the annual World Economic Forum, one panel expert said quiet quitting is the natural sequel to the Great Resignation and that if you want people to go the extra mile, start with meaningful work, respect, and fair pay.
As many businesses strive to expand their capabilities with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, employees worldwide are left to wonder where they fit into the mix. The answer is to empower workers to navigate a human-digital collaboration.
Recalibrate Employee Expectations
When workers aren’t happy with the status quo, that also affects a business’s growth potential. According to Gallup’s latest “State of the Global Workplace Report,” 57% of the world’s workers aren’t engaged and aren’t thriving in the workplace. The report also found that low engagement costs the global economy $7.8 trillion in lost productivity and is strongly linked to performance outcomes, including retention, productivity, safety, and profitability.
Unmanageable workloads, a lack of support, and unreasonable time pressures all play key roles, among other factors. Business units with engaged workers have 23% higher profit compared with those with reported “miserable” workers.
Executives are exploring how automations can be used to minimize repetitive, dangerous, or stressful work. Increased awareness about how technology can make our lives easier is starting to translate into expectations in the workplace.
When Employees Get Along with Their Digital Coworkers
With mounting demands and pressures on businesses and diminishing resources and expectations for fast delivery, time is an increasingly valued asset. By allowing digital workers to take over manual and repetitive tasks and delegate work to the most effective resource—human or digital—you can create more time for your business and put energy into growth areas.
By sharing workloads with digital workers, you can reduce the need for specific skill sets. Additionally, with a no-code platform, development is easier and quicker, reducing specific talent needs in areas such as IT.
When a task comes in, a digital worker can determine not only if it’s best delegated to a human or digital worker but also which human is best for the task. This considers several factors: Which human worker has demonstrated they excel at this task? Do they have the capacity or availability to take this on? This effective division of labor empowers your people to focus on building customer relationships and doing the work to enhance business growth.
Digital workers can also ensure regulatory compliance. They provide audit trails to show how data has moved through systems. Verifying and tracking transactions becomes seamless and void of human error—an issue with the repetitive nature of many compliance-related tasks. As with human workers, businesses can implement quality control procedures to build confidence around digital workers’ governance activities.
In many sectors, the costs of fixing mistakes can be egregiously high. Many organizations put a lot of time and money into procedures and processes to minimize error rates, as the upfront costs are far less than those at the back end of a mistake. Errors affect customer experiences, with real and impactful consequences in sectors like health or financial services. Subsequently, this costs organizations substantial time and money to resolve or minimize the damage. But with digital workers, error rates become negligible, as the possibility of inevitable human error is removed in areas like data entry.
Building a Unified Workforce Step by Step
Before any organization endeavors to create a collaborative human-digital workforce, it needs to take stock of where it is and where it wants to go. I have had so many businesses come to me and say they want to do something with AI and machine learning. Still, when I probe a bit further, they have no idea what that looks like, why they want those tools, or what it will take to implement them successfully.
Whether a business does it on its own or with the support of a partner, it first needs to devise a road map for where it wants to go and determine critical factors along that journey: What’s the time frame? How much is it willing to invest? What are the return-on-investment (ROI) expectations?
Across the many customers we have worked with, no two are the same. They have different in-house capabilities and aspirations. One constant is the need for change management—a critical determinant of success. Organizations need to change their structure and how their processes flow and operate. They need to incentivize their people to want digital solutions to be successful because if your workforce isn’t driving change, you don’t have any chance of unifying it with digital workers. Businesses are often too close to operations to effectively manage this change and require external intervention to help devise what that looks like.
We regularly see businesses take on bottom-up projects in incremental and siloed ways separate from top-down initiatives. Resources are wasted, and progress is stunted. Our solution is to bridge those gaps across the organization, connecting work at every step and level, to align all work to desired business outcomes. Organizations are left with a cohesive team working together, using people where they should, and automating wherever they can. This creates the right balance of work for your workers, encouraging productivity, innovation, and optimal customer service.
In this tight labor market, a unified workforce mitigates burnout issues and creates a work environment your employees deserve. Strike that balance, and you’ll facilitate a roster of fulfilled and motivated workers.
Beth Homer is General Manager of the Americas at SS&C Blue Prism.