UiPath, the leading enterprise Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software company, has announced the findings of a study on Ipact of RPA on Employee Experience, commissioned by UiPath and conducted by Forrester Consulting in February this year. The study reflects the need to keep employees at the core of RPA efforts. According to the study, succeeding in digital transformation initiatives requires organisations to pivot on a core lever: engaged employees.
“Employees today struggle to perform under the weight of mind-numbing, repetitive work. They’re influenced by their consumer experiences and want similar experiences in their jobs,” said Bobby Patrick, chief marketing officer at UiPath.
“With the rise of automation tools, many fear a dystopian view that solutions like RPA will replace jobs and human workers will be left out of favour. As the study finds, the reality is that RPA allows employees to engage in richer interactions with others, perform work that requires more brain power, and make fewer mistakes.”
According to the study, organisations are increasingly concerned with the employee experience as they grapple with the forces of automation and RPA, and that operating model issues and psychological barriers hold back RPA efforts. Ultimately, keeping employees engaged and happy will enable organisations to capitalise on the transformative potential of RPA.
The study also shows that employee experience must take center stage. Sixty-six per cent of respondents said that RPA restructures existing work, enabling employees to have more human interactions, and 60 per cent said RPA helps employees focus on more meaningful, strategic tasks while another 57 per cent of respondents said that RPA reduces manual errors.
It also suggests that organizations must overcome operating model issues and psychological challenges. Firms are struggling to scale their RPA solutions due to the lack of trained personnel and resources to support and use of RPA technology. In fact, 93 per cent of respondents said they struggle to understand the different deployment options available to them. Additionally, leaders must overcome the psychological impact of RPA on their workforce. Communication and collaboration between the business and workers, and well-designed change management programmes are crucial.
Another benefit the study finds is that RPA leads to increasingly engaged employees. The benefits of RPA reported by firms include increased efficiency (86 per cent), deeper insights into customers (67 per cent), improved customer service (57 per cent), and improved employee engagement (57 per cent). In addition, with highly repetitive and rule-based tasks being automated, RPA enables firms to create digital workforces that execute repeatable process steps faster, accurately and more cost-effectively than traditional human workers. Ninety-two per cent of respondents expected faster efficiency and 86 per cent said they are seeing exactly that. Keeping employees engaged and happy must go hand-in-hand with deploying RPA to improve customer outcomes; firms must be employee-centric as well as customer-centric in their approach to truly capitalise on the advantages offered by RPA.
The study also recommends that firms aim to improve both operational efficiency and employee experience at the same time, create an RPA centre of excellence, manage psychological implications at the onset of an implementation, and use a human-centric change management process that carefully considers human factors, ensuring that people will feel valued and safe.
UiPath’s mission is to deliver the platform for the Automation First era. The company’s vision is a robot for every person – freeing people of burdensome, repetitive labour so they can focus on more valuable, gratifying work. UiPath has automated millions of repetitive, rule-based tasks for organisations worldwide. Through its commitment to bring digital-era skills to more than a million people, UiPath is transforming work by improving job satisfaction, driving productivity to new levels, and enhancing customer service.
