Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has gained a significant position in Industry and has become a game changer in the way organizations manage their processes. However, the idea remains that as a technology that uses robots to emulate human actions, RPA progressively eliminating human interactions and resources.
Do you think so too?
Let’s dive deep together into this to see how RPA can improve efficiency and enable your talent to focus on more added-value activities without jeopardizing your workers’ contributions.
It’s not about machines replacing humans but machines augmenting humans. Humans and machines have different relative strengths and weaknesses, and it’s about the combination of these two that will allow human intents and business processes to scale 10x, 100x, and beyond that in the coming years. Robin Bordoli. CEO NextRoll
Marcela Seohanes
Senior Advanced Business Analyst in Software Development
Do you remember other times in history when calculators, computers, databases, and the internet broke into our day-to-day lives? We were struggling to embrace the changes, and tons of concerns crossed our minds about the impact of those new technologies.
Well, if we rewind a little bit, we will see that instead of competing with our way of doing things and our work environment, they arrived first to stay and second to make our lives easier and enhance our productivity. When we learned that with them, we were able to show results faster, save money and time and evolve as humans and employees, we finally understood that it was a matter of educating ourselves on how to co-exist.
The same thing is happening with RPA. It can lead us to think that with its implementation, human roles will become redundant; however, the clue here is to understand that workforces can´t be replaced by a robot because, as Mr. Bordoli argues above, RPA bots don’t think. They can’t adapt to changes or train themselves to gain experience and develop core skills; they need human knowledge to manage them and interact to make sure corporates get the real benefits of the RPA initiative.
That´s the main reason why empowering a workforce and organizations should be one of the first steps when implementing RPA. Allow your people to see that you value them enough to make them invest their time in value-added human tasks vs. repetitive robotic tasks. You will see how their doubts transform into an improvement of the employees’ morale and maximization of their potential.
This is a paradigm shift in the ways that we work. That is a reality. The ways that we work are changing, and the ways we are tackling problems are changing. That’s a reality. Abe Khaleeli, head of PMO and the intelligent automation practice, SiriusXM/Pandora
What would be the best approach to make employees comfortable with new technologies?
You might be thinking now, okay, so what would be the best approach to make employees feel comfortable with the new technology and address their biggest concern: will my job be taken over by a robot? There is not one single magic bullet solution that applies to everyone. However, care is a human skill that is universally acknowledged and, when related to RPA means:
- Employee engagement
- Clear and transparent transition to the new automated ecosystem
- Enabling a training program
- Facilitating an environment where employees can upskill
- Empowering the workforce to lead and sustain the change (Center of Excellence – COE creation)
Well, we started this article talking about the past but what is required now is that companies learn how to listen to the market needs and the workforce of the future, becoming groups of people attracted to innovation and looking for places where they can be real participants of digital transformation. That´s the reason why it is important to start adapting to new technologies and adapting processes to liberate the human potential all companies have. People are, and should always be, the engine of progress and, at the same time, the fuel for it to keep moving.
The future of automation looks undoubtedly brilliant. Hold hands with your people, buckle up and get ready to enhance human functionality.