THAT TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES ARE POSITIVELY CHANGING THE WORLD OF WORK IS STATING THE OBVIOUS, BUT IT’S NOT ALL WINWIN. THE SPEED AND IMPACTS ARE CAUSING DIVISION AND DISAGREEMENT, AS JOB ROLES AND SKILLS ARE RAPIDLY BEING MADE EXTINCT AND TRADITIONAL LABOUR IS SUPERSEDED BY MACHINES. AI PLAUDITS ARE CONFIDENT THAT THIS WILL FREE UP PEOPLE TO FOCUS ON MORE CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE ELEMENTS – AND THAT A COHESIVE RELATIONSHIP WITH TECH WILL LEAD TO IMPROVED PERFORMANCE – BUT AS FOR THE PLAN TO RESKILL TOWARDS THAT CREATIVE HINTERLAND, THERE ISN’T ONE.

Amidst continuing skills shortages, high inflation, rising salary demands and an increased need for cost efficiencies, if there was ever a time when automation would ‘have its day’, it would seem to be right now. But while there is a clear business case for automation, the relationship between the robotic and the human has never been straightforward. Meanwhile, the dystopian vision of ‘robots taking over the world’ and humans becoming subordinates proliferate. But seriously, how can digital and human labour become colleagues?

The reality is not quite so much like a Hollywood sci-fi movie script, it’s a more nuanced and subtle picture and more about automating processes, rather than usurping whole jobs. There is also certainly huge scope for human and machine to work together, in a positive symbiosis that maximises process efficiency and frees up people for more value-adding tasks. Finding that balance must surely be one of the big strategic aims for any HR Director and their team. So how far have we come? Tracking automation and digital labour for several years in the Digital Leadership Report, 2022 research found that digital labour is very much on the agenda. Amongst the digital leaders surveyed from countries around the world, the average expectation is that nearly one-in-six of the workforce will be automated in the next five years. Almost a third of digital leaders (29 percent) think that automation will be critical for gaining a competitive advantage over the next 12 months. Although growing at a slower pace than in previous years, the worldwide RPA market is expected to experience doubledigit growth in 2023, growing 17.5 percent year-on-year, according to Gartner research. We only have to look back at the results of the same survey in 2018, to see just how pervasive digital labour has become today.

Implementations have increased significantly across all departments and while in 2018, customer support was the second biggest area of automation after IT, today finance takes that position, plus a big jump in HR automation.

The sweet spot remains repetitive, low value, high volume tasks – data entry, for example – or invoice matching and processing. Machines, unlike humans, don’t tire or make mistakes. They can work 24/7 at 100 percent accuracy, if designed and implemented effectively. Thinking about HR more specifically, there is enormous potential for automation to make a difference and it’s already in widespread use, to different degrees. Indeed, technology can add value right across the entire HR value chain. At the recruitment end, it can be used to screen CVs against specific criteria and to schedule interviews, saving significant amounts of human time, especially in volume recruitment scenarios. For onboarding, automated applications can help create consistent processes and flows to keep the joiner experience high. This can be a significant factor in boosting retention, given that the first six months are often where the risk of an employee leaving is highest. Intelligent tools can help HR teams analyse the employee experience and stay alert to risks, while AI-based capabilities embedded in learning and development platforms can make ‘Netflix-style’ recommendations to individuals for further training modules, adding significant value by helping them think about career-pathing and future development. For workforce management and planning, meanwhile, predictive analytics can be utilised to identify turnover or absence risks, based on previous behaviours and external factors, and help model resourcing levels against anticipated workload demands. We have started to see the development in earnest, of AI-powered capabilities, such as ChatGPT and equivalents, that can help individuals across organisations – in HR and indeed in any function – complete jobs done faster. These can be particularly effective in tasks such as gathering research information, creating templates and writing first drafts of documents. They are not, as yet, the finished article – texts for example, are likely to need editing and shaping, especially to put them into the right tone of voice – but they can make an excellent head start and significantly reduce the hours needed on specific tasks. With Microsoft due to introduce its Co-pilot application into future editions of the Office suite, these kinds of capabilities could soon step nearer to mass adoption and use.

So, with all of this in consideration, where do the barriers still lie? In our research, the most prevalent blocker to large-scale automation of tasks and processes cited by digital leaders remains cultural resistance. There is still fear and suspicion amongst employees of automation and AI, worrying that it will create a displacement effect and also potentially drive down wages. There may be a degree of trepidation amongst HR teams too, perhaps fuelled by ongoing concerns that various human biases may be baked into the code and prejudice the results. There have also been various high profile instances of AI bots picking up and replicating inappropriate language and sentiments from exposure on social media. However, one of the absolutely key messages for HR teams and employees more widely, is not to be afraid of automation/AI and don’t ignore it either. There is almost certainly going to be an element of ‘natural selection’ and the organisations that embrace and leverage it within their business, could be the leaders of the future. Those that don’t will struggle to compete. There are other significant barriers too. In our research, close behind cultural resistance were a lack of expertise and the fact that automation is actually more complicated than expected. This just underlines the fact that organisations need the right support to make automation a reality. What may at first seem like a simple process to automate can quite quickly turn out to be a spaghetti of logic branches. The degree of technical complexity can be high.

How then should organisations, supported by the HR function, best proceed in order to devise and implement an effective automation strategy? The first crucial step, as we intimated earlier, is to make the realisation that what is really in scope here is processes rather than jobs. This then leads to the concept of Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). Either independently or in conjunction with an advisory consultant, BPR is about reviewing all the processes at play within an area of the business with the process owners and asking whether they can be reconfigured to become leaner and more efficient – accelerating outputs and reducing costs. These processes should be catalogued into a central repository, reviewed and then assessed against a number of key questions, including: Can this process be redesigned to make it more efficient? Is this the right process to be re-engineered or is there another process behind it that should be the focus? If this process needs to be re-engineered, does that involve automation? As this last point indicates, not all re-engineering necessarily results in automation. Other possibilities should be considered first, such as integrating them into an adjacent process or area.

When processes for re-engineering and/or automation have been identified, this is where HR should come in. Resource planning is critical. In conjunction with the business process owner, consideration will need to be given to what impact changing or automating a process will have on the individuals who currently perform the task. Will the change undermine or substantially affect their job description? What consultation around this will be needed? Consultation is certainly a keyword here. Any successful automation initiative depends on involving and consulting with the individuals who will be impacted. They’re the ones closest to the actual process, so embrace their input on how it could best be reconfigured. Involving them in the automation design will make them much more engaged and invested in the outcome. It will also help them see that the automation is not so much a threat as a mechanism that can free up their time and help them branch into more fulfilling areas.

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