After the implementation of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in a company, business owners and employees alike face a new work setup that brings a series of challenges and positive changes.
When discussing RPA's potential and benefits, the opening statement is absolute: the machine will not replace but empower employees. This empowerment, by assisting the employees, will reach the C-level, as well, ultimately transforming how the whole company operates.
An EY case study showed that with RPA, a financial technology firm's in-house process was shortened from around 1,400 hours to 280 hours every year. And when the work hours get cut like this, two things happen.
- First of all, the morale goes up, since RPA's job is to perform repetitive tasks that employees themselves often label tiring or boring.
- Secondly, as these are the tasks that can eat up employees, cause them work-related stress, and possibly lead to health issues, the workforce's mental and physical well-being can improve. From a business owner's point of view, that also means less sick leave and more productivity.
Deloitte's automation study says that this can even affect 50 percent of their tasks, so half of their time now has to be rearranged. Employees can move on to do higher-value work where they can discover their part of strategic thinking, creativity, can learn new skills and simply be a better coworker.
RPA helps with upskilling the workforce
When a part of your job is "taken care of" by a robot, your scope for development expands. Business owners can offer employees to take the professional training they never had the time to do. This can happen in the frame of formal education or for larger organizations with separate divisions. It can also be a chance to reach out to each other.
Colleagues can organize internal training where they can represent their field of expertise and help each other understand what they actually do. They can come up with suggestions on how they could cooperate better and share their current professional challenges in the hope of gaining new insight from another department.
RFA brings employee-to-employee relations to the next level
Formal education and official training are not the only way to give space to your employees for self-development. Launching a mentorship program can further improve the workplace culture; in fact, about 70% of Fortune 500 companies have a program like this, according to Forbes.com.
Mentoring programs are great for sharing information and experience between coworkers and even generations. Therefore they can have a good effect on job satisfaction, retention rates, job diversity, and they're all about the professional and personal development of employees.
RPA turns employees over to the CEO mindset
The CEO and the management, in general, is in charge of leading the ship. They can see the big picture and analyze it well before making decisions. Employees are usually dealing with their tasks short-term, doing what has to be done in the day, probably seeing ahead to a week.
This is not a bad thing, more like a consequence of today's common working systems. However, when RPA is introduced to such an environment, as cleared out above, a lot of time from the employee's schedule can be freed up and can be used more intelligently.
When employees are given projects where strategic and creative thinking is needed and they can get the taste of understanding where the ship is headed, they get more devoted. They can contribute more and more to the company's life. Simply put, they'll find their purpose.
Deloitte's automation study concluded that "RPA empowers people to increase their unique value, connect more fully with the purpose and strategy of their organization."
RPA provides business owners with a more efficient organization
Whatever effects RPA has on employees, is going to be present for business owners, as well. By introducing RPA in the workplace, first of all, they will save costs as automation implementation is cheaper than hiring additional human workforce. In case the current one cannot deal with the amount of (low-value) tasks.
Then, as explained above, they can allocate their employees to more critical tasks, thus improving employee productivity and satisfaction. This overall forms a more efficient organization, which is the passport of a successful leader.
As per usual, though, business owners have the responsibility for introducing a new setup in their companies. Way before implementing RPA, they must get ready for change management, show effective leadership and actionable plans for their workforce. They have to be prepared with answers about how every individual will be affected by the reallocation of their tasks and freed-up time, how they will get support and how their new role will look like.