Successful Intelligent Automation Requires a Human Centered Approach
Organizations investing in Intelligent Automation will likely reap the benefits of decreased costs, increased efficiency, and increased experience, but at what risk to their investment in human capital? In the interrelated world of Intelligent Automation (IA), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) one can argue that since process automation is able to independent of or in parallel with humans to automate manual, repetitive, and often mundane tasks, that it impacts humans the most. In order to avoid the potential chaos and to prepare for the rapid pace of change that automation can create, companies should take a human centered approach to implementing robotic process automation.
Be Honest And Transparent About The Impact of Automation
Transparency is critically important when implementing automation technology: transparency regarding how automation will impact employees. People will fear that their job will be automated: “What will happen to me? Will a portion of my job be automated or all of it?” Honest and transparent communication can make or break a process automation implementation.
Transparency may sound obvious or easy, yet it can be difficult for leaders for many reasons. Many highly competitive industries, such as pharmaceuticals, retail, technology, telecoms and media, work in silos and habitually do not share information due to the nature of their business. An information leak to a competitor could literally cost such a company billions of dollars. However, organizations that so fiercely protect information from others often unknowingly protect it from themselves. It’s important to understand whether or not transparency is counter to your organization’s culture, and if it is, work with leaders to overcome that from that outset of your automation initiative. One way to combat a non-sharing culture is to leverage Change Advocates to identify problem areas and provide support via peer knowledge transfer.
Communicate with and listen to your employees throughout the process. “We tried something, we got through it, do you like it or not?” Whether the feedback is positive or negative, it’s important that you work to understand the reason behind it. As you experiment and pilot, communicate what worked as well as what did not work and share what you learned as a result. You’ll find that employees are very understanding that some mistakes will be made along the way and front-line employees will be even more engaged to provide high value solutions to existing issues.
While early studies of Intelligent Automation indicate very low job loss and in fact long term job growth, especially in high value activities, it is important to be honest that some functions or roles may go away and in some cases jobs may be lost. Some employees will have to make a choice whether or not they want to learn something new. However, the introduction of automation can also generate excitement and engagement. Automation will give people time to THINK and the automation process will encourage them to think differently. With time to think will come new ideas. Over time, new ideas should lead to new opportunities, functions and roles for the organization and its people.
Build Curiosity As A Capability Through Engagement
Organizations introducing Intelligent Automation should begin to foster curiosity as a capability. They need to help all employees be curious, to feel comfortable asking questions, to create a safe place to talk about issues and problems, and to innovate. Like transparency, this is no easy task. Many industries and functions think in black and white due to regulations; they must continue to operate within these guidelines, yet also begin to see gray. Other organizations will be hampered by a culture of blame, shame, and fear: “If I am doing the process and not getting it done on time or not getting the right results, then I must be creating the problem.”
Through engagement in the IA process employees can be encouraged to look beyond their desk and think about the big picture. Leverage your human capital investment and ask your employees: “What should we improve? What should we get rid of? What should we spend more time doing? What should we spend less time doing? What would you like to do more of? What do you not like doing?”
On a recent automation program, the project team conducted a few workshops to engage stakeholders by asking these very questions. Following the workshops, the project team received requests for more workshops. People started coming to the workshops prepared and with mock-ups of future process flows. In some cases, the ideas were so innovative that the existing technology was not yet ready for them! But that was OK as the employees felt part of the automation decision making process and there is now a large pipeline for future automation projects.
Originally, the program web site had the standard “Submit Questions Here” button. Following the workshops, the project team updated the button to “Let’s Talk About Your Idea.” Anyone in this large global organization could submit an automation idea. The program received 2000 ideas a day for the first 60 days. Initially, a team of business analysts reviewed and responded to each and every request. When they could no longer keep up with the volume of ideas, the team took a pause, revamped the submittal form, and automated the idea submission process!
Through this engagement, employees felt heard and that they had input and some control regarding what was coming to them, and therefore, resistance to automation technology decreased and employees were much more open and engaged with the changes ahead.
Look For Opportunities To Increase Employee Satisfaction
Successful Intelligent Automation need not come at the expense of employee satisfaction; rather, the aim of the technology should be to enhance the experience of both customers and employees. Engaging employees in conversations about the work they like to do, automating the things they don’t like to do, and providing more time to innovate, can greatly increase employee satisfaction.
But now that you automated part of their job, what are they going to do with all of that extra time? At one company, prior to automation the typical employee worked 50-60 hours a week. Automation ended up reducing employee work effort by an average of 10 hours a week. The CEO said, “Keep it! Go home. Be with your family.” You can only imagine how employee satisfaction increased as a result!
Respect And Account For Emotions
When asked how their organizational change management approach was different for automation projects relative to other technology driven change, practitioners indicated that there was an increased need to focus on feelings and emotions. They found that employees can have a very strong emotional connection to legacy manual processes. There is a sense of control when you can use autopilot to do what you’ve always done: you know what to expect on Monday morning. However, the future won’t be so predictable. The new automation will require leadership and employees to develop new ways of working.
One company had a team of data scientists that was networked across the globe and had worked together for years. Their job was to gather and consolidate information and then apply an algorithm to determine a forecast. The manual process required 50 hours a week per data scientist and 100% of available data. When the entire process was automated, the new process required only 20 hours a week per data scientist and only 75% of available data to get the desired result. The data scientists refused to accept and use the new data. They did not TRUST it. In hopes of remedying the situation, the company decided to run the manual and automated processes in parallel for a number of cycles. Once the data scientists saw the results and their consistency, they began to trust the new data as well as accept new discoveries such as the fact that some of their old assumptions were incorrect.
Organizations must account for the emotions that people will go through when implementing automation: fear of the unknown, false fears, lack of trust, and even mourning. If emotions are ignored, they will fester, people will revolt, refuse to adopt, and self-sabotage. You’ll be left wondering “How did it go so wrong?” and in the meantime, your organization will have missed market time.
In Conclusion…
What Intelligent Automation, Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation truly mean to the future of work remains to be seen. If the focus of work was conducting manual tasks with efficiency, what will work be about now? How do we continue to identify, maintain, and harness the human emotional connection with work? Do employees spend their newly found time digging deeper into process discovery? Process intelligence? Process mining? Whoever figures that out has got it made!
Contact ChangeStaffing to learn how our organizational change management consultants can help your organization successfully adopt robotic process automation.
A special thanks to Louann Starr-Guiliano, Organizational Change Management and Business Transformation Leader, for her thought leadership and for collaborating with us on this blog.