How HR Can Help Their Workforce To Excel In A Digital World

Digital training empowers and retains workforces

While companies have been considering how to digitally transform their organizations for years now, the coronavirus outbreak has made the need for technological innovation glaringly apparent. With COVID-19 accelerating nearly every industry’s entry into a new, largely remote world of work, organizations have quickly learned just how valuable the digital investments that facilitate business continuity can be.

To stay competitive in today’s business climate, organizations need to have mechanisms in place to ensure agile and cost-effective operations. With Global Workplace Analytics estimating that 25% to 30% of the workforce will be working at home multiple days per week by the end of 2021, this is only becoming more critical. To catalyze digital transformation efforts and enhance digital workflows, many enterprises are investing in automation. Automation can speed up processes and foster process agility – enabling people to focus on the more strategic, critical aspects of their job. For this reason, it can drastically improve business output and performance.
 
That said, as with any new workplace innovation, it’s important that employees feel comfortable using automation. This is where HR comes in. HR teams can play a critical role in change management efforts related to automation deployment, particularly around developing internal communications, and organizing training opportunities.

Here’s what HR departments should know in order to lead the charge for successful automation deployment—and workforce reskilling—in their organizations:

Now Is a Critical Moment for Organizations to Automate

Today’s world presents ever-increasing opportunities to integrate automation into a company’s infrastructure due to its ability to assist professionals in addressing new business and market pressures stemming from the pandemic. By mimicking the experience of a human interacting with a computer system in whichever way an organization deems helpful, tools like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can expedite manual processes (e.g., data entry) that can pull employees away from executing their core responsibilities.

With these tasks taken care of, employees can then focus more of their time and energy on the value-added aspects of their roles. While most companies probably never anticipated a disruption as significant as COVID-19, RPA’s range of applications and scalability allows for it to quickly serve organizations’ new, unique, and evolving needs.

Automation Propels Career Success

Despite the value of automation, some people fear that the technology could make their jobs obsolete. The reality is that automation functions best as a business tool for helping professionals excel in their current positions, not push them out of them. 

To break down employees’ misconceptions and concerns, HR departments must educate their teams on the vast potential of the technology when used correctly. For example, by expediting onboarding and executing error-free payroll processing, automation enables HR pros to reclaim up to 40% of their time, which they can then dedicate back to the engaging, people-oriented work at the heart of their roles. 

Successful automation deployment necessitates an employee-centric approach, with the HR team holding conversations with colleagues to determine which parts of their jobs they’d benefit from having automated so that they feel engaged with and in control of the change.

Digital Training Empowers—and Retains—Workforces 

Once staff are on board with the idea of using automation, the next step for HR departments is to actually ensure employees are trained to use it. According to a 2020 UiPath survey, 86% of employees wish their employer offered opportunities to acquire new skills, and 68% believe automation could increase their productivity. With employee appetite for upskilling and reskilling, organizations’ ability to maintain their employee roster in the coming years may come down to whether they offer training opportunities to staff.  

HR teams can coordinate employee training by exploring the number of automation training and certification programs available online. An even more convenient option is to determine whether automation vendors offer training courses specific to their technology. Through these initiatives, companies can provide their teams with the skills needed to successfully use automation—and ultimately grow in their careers.

The future of work starts today. COVID-19 was a jolt for many organizations and has both created new customer and market demands, and accelerated companies towards adopting the digital tools capable of effectively responding to those pressures. Successful use of automation, however, depends on whether employees are equipped with the knowledge of how to maximize the investments’ potential. To this end, it’s critical that HR departments provide the training, education, and certification processes necessary for employees to use automation comfortably and confidently. Upskilling workforces around automation efforts is the key for bringing organizations into the future, and, as educators and change facilitators, HR teams are the ones best positioned for unlocking it.

Mandy Sebel is the Chief People Officer (CPO) of UiPath and has more than 20 years of experience leading high performance human resources (HR) organizations. She has committed her career to building high-growth organizations and brings extensive experience in employee engagement, talent acquisition and on-boarding, change management, and organizational development. Her previous work includes integral roles at start-up companies and key positions at mature, but transforming, organizations such as CAN Capital and Dun & Bradstreet Corporation. While at Dun & Bradstreet, Sebel served as HR partner and chief of staff for the Small Business Group and led the integration of Hoover’s and other acquisitions. Sebel is also a veteran of digital commerce and has worked with some of the fastest-growing marketing and technology players in the industry, helping one organization grow to thousands of employees. Visit www.uipath.com  Connect Mandy Sebel Follow @UiPath