How to best prepare your human employees for automation

Even being such a human-centric career field, HR can greatly benefit from automation. In companies where tech advancements are flourishing, employees are reaping the benefits. According to an Oracle/Future Workplace report, the majority (65percent) of workers are optimistic, excited, and grateful about having robot co-workers. Nearly a quarter report having a loving and gratifying relationship with AI at work. 

On the contrary, there’s an expected and understandable hesitation surrounding this massive transition. Employees may fear they will be “replaced” or no longer needed if AI becomes a dominant part of their workflows. This simply isn’t true – AI heightens human capabilities, alleviates monotonous tasks, and presents an opportunity for employees to work their way up the corporate ladder.

At Roots Automation, we’re constantly having conversations with HR professionals who are ready to take the leap and invest in automation. One of their biggest concerns is typically: How can I make my employees comfortable with the deployment of AI? Here’s how…

Explain How AI Augments Human Capabilities

Companies that use AI in conjunction with humans create far more business value than those who don’t. There’s a widespread misconception that AI will displace jobs. Our take on this is that if a company implements AI for the sole purpose of displacing employees, they will only see short-term productivity gains.

The long-term advantages come from the partnership between AI and humans. AI tools, like bots, are simply altering how work gets done and who does it. When used correctly, the larger impact of AI is that it is complementing and augmenting human skills, not replacing them.

Highlight the Tasks Bots Can Take Over

What’s one of the most effective ways to get your employees on board with the shift to automation? Explain to them how much easier it’ll make their lives. On average, an HR department spends 40% of their time on burdensome administrative tasks such as retrieving data from one system and entering the information into another. If employees understand that this type of work can be automated, they’ll be more relaxed about the introduction of AI in their workplace.

We’ve also seen that when HR managers present their employees with the common HR functions that can be automated, they feel a sense of relief and excitement associated with implementing AI. They realize they won’t be as overwhelmed or bogged down in repetitive tasks on the daily. Here are a few of the everyday HR functions that can be automated:

·        Recruiting and Sourcing: Resume screening is one of the biggest bottlenecks in recruiting. Automation weeds out under-qualified applicants, saving countless hours for recruiters. It also helps with pre-qualification. Recruitment automation in the form of chatbots allows human recruiters to provide consistent updates in real-time by asking pre-qualifying questions related to the job requirements and providing feedback, updates, and next-step suggestions.

·        Interviews: Digitized interview technology records candidate interviews and assesses factors such as their word choices, speech patterns, and facial expressions to predict how well a candidate fits the role.

·        Employee Onboarding: is typically one of the most tedious tasks taken on by HR managers. All of the onboarding processes can be automated – job posting, collecting resumes, interviewing, and giving network access to new employees. This accelerates the onboarding process while decreasing the associated costs.

·        Employee Offboarding: is also not a fun responsibility for HR employees. Automation can handle the collection of termination files, rounding up and accounting of company equipment, and removing employees from the payroll and benefits.

·        Employee Benefits: This is another time consuming and difficult task that can be made less of a hassle with automation.HR managers can automate benefit eligibility, benefits education and training, benefit modification, open enrollment, and benefit onboarding.

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 See also: Automation Tools: The 21st Century's Industrial Revolution

Convey Why It’s a Growth Opportunity

Productivity will skyrocket if you allow AI to remove “everyday” tasks from the employee’s plates. Of course, the admin tasks are essential to the smooth running of a business but are not the areas that excite, motivate, or get employees noticed for promotions and pay raises.

Allowing bots to pick up the mundane tasks supports your employees immensely by permitting them to spend more time focusing on building relationships, providing excellent customer service, complex problem solving, and further progressing in their careers. 

When employees have more time carved out for meaningful work, there’s more of a chance that they will be able to climb up the corporate ladder. For example, our customers at Roots Automation have been able to automate the everyday HR tasks. It’s because of the support from bots that employees spend more time on cognitive tasks.

This type of engagement and excitement for work ultimately leads to promotions and career growth. Bogging people down with dull workflows will only stunt growth for both the professional and the company.

Takeaway

It’s a long road ahead for wide-spread comfort with AI in the workplace, but adoption and building familiarity with the technology starts in your own work community. Our biggest piece of advice is to express to employees that AI is the ideal teammate in digital form. Bots are coworkers that have a mix of great human and bot qualities.

They embody human qualities like learning from previous tasks, adapting to change, and keeping open communication while also incorporating valuable bot qualities such as highly efficient, accurate, and scaling automatically to complete high volumes of work.

Every aspect of business, and our personal lives, has been flipped on its head over the past year. It’s an ideal time to experiment with technology that will improve your workflows, such as Digital Coworkers, and also improve the well-being of your employees who likely need some extra support during this time.

Case Study: Helping a Company Grow

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Contact us today to start your digital transformation journey: info@rootsautomation.com

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