As robotic process automation grows, people management will become even more important says Neil Bentley, chief knowledge officer, ActiveOps
By Neil Bentley
No longer the preserve of science fiction, the impact of robots in the workplace has been subjected to intense debate in recent months, with a new study by the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford and accountancy firm Deloitte (http://bit.ly/1mj2qSJ) warning that more than a third of jobs risk being lost to automation over the next 10-20 years.
From screen classics, such as Blade Runner and Ex Machina, to the thought-provoking TV series Humans, a common feature in many sci-fi dramas is that, whatever new challenges they face, people are still people who deal in complex politics and emotions, such as greed, envy and lust (just a normal day at the office).
In a world where robots – or robotic process automation (RPA) – is already a reality, it’s clear coaches and mentors have a lot to think about. In many ways, this means management of people will become even more important.
In the near future, RPA has the potential to replace much of the mundane and simple work in the front and back office, such as transcribing data from one system to another and other repetitive work. While this will inevitably cost jobs, it will also change the nature of work for those who remain.
The profile of the work done by people is also likely to shift towards the more complex. With it, there will be a smaller pool of well-trained, skilled employees capable of handling exceptions, challenging customers and unpredictable situations, increasing employee power and, potentially, rates of pay.
So what are the implications for operations? Here are three key actions current/future leaders, coaches and mentors must consider:
1. Re-imagining workforce management (WFM)
Currently, many WFM technologies are based on high-functionality software. With a rise in RPA, mechanistic management is unlikely to survive, especially when machines are able to do the easy stuff, resulting in a more powerful and articulate workforce that expect to be viewed as more than just numbers in an equation.
In this already developing landscape, WFM and workforce optimisation are likely to be phased out and replaced by operations performance management, where numerically based capacity management and people-based performance management are blended into a new operational paradigm.
2. A return to Systems Thinking
The legacy of management geniuses like W Edwards Deming and Peter Senge is in the understanding that organisations are a lot like eco-systems or weather systems. Many of today’s managers and coaches are already realising that organisational performance is not one-size-fits-all. Instead, it is the result of a whole set of complex interactions between many moving parts. Introducing RPA into this individual organisational eco-system is therefore likely to have wide-reaching consequences, with the successful exploitations being realised by organisations that have understood and paid attention to the whole system.
3. A greater emphasis on well-being
The cost to the whole system of poorly managed employees is prohibitively large, be it through sickness absence or the cost of serial recruitment as a result of high labour turnover. As organisations become more concentrated around fewer, more highly skilled people, looking after them will, doubtless, become more of a priority.
Neil Bentley has been helping organisations improve their frontline operating performance for over 20 years. Originally qualified in psychology, he worked in Lucas Industries in the 1980s before focusing on financial services and the public sector. He launched ActiveOps with fellow Organisation Consulting Partnership (OCP) partner Richard Jeffery, in 2005