Building A Better Workplace: Allying Humans With RPA

It’s impossible to ignore the near revolution that has taken place across industries in just the last few years. Following the global health crisis, the massive and sudden shift to remote work hasn’t reversed course even as offices have reopened. However, although many staff prefer these new arrangements, some pushback remains. Though it is clear that employees prefer remote work or a hybrid arrangement with part-time in-office hours, 75% of managers in one survey said in-person work was preferable for humans with RPA.

This disconnect stems partly from the idea that distance negatively impacts employee performance and team cohesion. Elon Musk even controversially said that Tesla employees who did not return to the office could “pretend to work elsewhere.” Despite such viewpoints, the real-world results are clear: there are limitations to remote and hybrid work, but those limitations have not constrained productivity or severely impacted capacity.

Thanks to maturing automation technologies such as RPA, or robotic process automation, addressing brick and mortar shortcomings could be within easy reach. Not only that, but the consequences of the pandemic revealed many shortcomings in the brick-and-mortar office model. With these problem areas standing out in stark relief to the potential inherent in remote work, is it time to reconsider our approach to work across industries?

Where the Traditional Office Model Falls Short

Although there are undoubtedly strengths to the office model—it’s lasted this long, after all—it has some serious shortcomings that are difficult to overcome. What are some of the fundamental flaws that the future of work should seek to overcome?

1. Commute time. Employees may need long commutes to cover the distance between home and the office. Not only do all those extra miles on the road mean a negative environmental impact, but it’s time wasted—you can’t get anything done while driving an hour through traffic just to start work.

2. Poor resource allocation and waste associated with unnecessary meetings or business trips. Is that industry seminar really going to provide value, or is it a waste of company time? Most meetings don’t produce anything of value—pointless meetings waste billions of dollars every year.

3. Employee burnout is a major problem. From the commute to a dull office environment to work that doesn’t engage the mind, the traditional model creates burnout on an ongoing basis.

4. Availability is a challenge, too, when you require people to always be in the office. Sickness spreads easily in an office environment, leading to shortages during spikes of seasonal illnesses. There may be little to no available coverage to take on additional work, either.

How Effective RPA Tackles Brick and Mortar Shortcomings

Robotic process automation has rapidly gained traction in many industries and for a good reason. In the age of hybrid work models, this rules-based approach to automating repetitive tasks can make a massive difference in productivity. Popularly said to be a technology that removes the robot from human workers, RPA can handle many tasks often handled by employees: capturing data, entering it into computer systems, sharing information, and handling reminders are just a few examples of RPA applications.

RPA doesn’t mean making positions redundant and taking jobs from people. Instead, it means freeing those people to use their skills and creative thinking to solve higher-value problems for the business. With effective automation in place, businesses can also solve many problems with brick-and-mortar work.

1. Remote workers can rely on RPA-powered processes to make information available or apply updates without needing to visit the office.

2. RPA helps keep remote and hybrid teams on the same page.

3. RPA can reduce burnout by refocusing employees on work that boosts job satisfaction rather than remaining on tasks that never change from day to day.

4. RPA expands the workforce’s capability so you can scale up to achieve more without the need to onboard additional staff.

The Digital Age Demands Different Workplace Models

The old status quo is gone—the “new normal” is here to stay, and businesses must adapt to remain competitive. In a global digital age where work takes place over great distances and often 24 hours a day, the brick-and-mortar office retains limitations that could hold back the future of a company. By pivoting to a strategy that pairs the best strengths of your staff with the tireless power of RPA, you can unlock the future of how we work.

From reducing wasted resources and lowering the rate of burnout to extending the ability of your business to accomplish things at any hour, RPA provides a vital framework for growth. When combined with other technologies such as AI and ML for truly “intelligent automation,” human staff can accomplish even more—and stay engaged with their work all the while.