#4 -Achieving workforce transformation and innovation by upskilling and training
Bi-weekly newsletter series highlighting the stories and experiences of technologists, startups, and entrepreneurs who change the future of work through #RPA (#RoboticProcessAutomation), #IntelligentAutomation, #ArtificialIntelligence (#AI), #ProcessMining and the broader # futureofwork automation technologies.
We will cover how a technology area within the Future of Work ecosystem impacted and changed our lives.
The future of work has been defined as the augmentation of robots and AI into your daily work and tasks, the transformation of how you do your monotonous and repetitive tasks, and where you do your job. As technology and time progress, the three pillars evolve to adapt to our current environment to meet the needs of what we do. The three pillars have people at the core, followed by technology and process. The people are at the core because in an enterprise, no matter how digital or old that is, innovation, improvement, and building of new products are based on the work people do and the mindset the people have in the company.
One of the most exciting aspects of predicting the future is that we always think and forecast what will happen but do not focus on what won’t happen. What won’t happen depends on what the innovative and entrepreneurial minds choose not to do in the next few years and where the people do not want change to happen. As such, innovation irrevocably comes to the fields and areas where people dislike change. Similarly, the purpose and the design of a product don’t mean that the product, when adopted, will be used for the same reasons that it’s designed for; hence you can point to the many stories revolving around Facebook.
So, what’s NOT going to change in the Future of Work?
One of the key points in understanding what may happen in the future is around what may not happen.
People will still want lower prices to pay for the goods and services
They want faster transaction processing speeds and reduced the cost of that transaction – think of supply chain hurdles, invoice processing or order-to-cash, purchase-to-pay processes
Customers wish for a shorter turnaround time and accurate answers after reaching out to your Customer Support and receiving a better customer experience with time efficiency. Nobody wants to spend hours on the phone and get a poor answer.
Nobody will be passionate about doing a mundane, monotonous, and repetitive task. It’s hard to hear one say, “I love creating that report every morning by editing many Excel Spreadsheets.”
More and more people will get technically savvy and have coding backgrounds in the future. However, automating the automation approach with low-code/no-code solutions democratize access to technology.
The innovation may begin from top to bottom or bottom-up. An enterprise executive may prove their leadership by guiding the company in a direction that can bring change and innovation to the processes or their products and services offerings. Alternatively, people start to notice the inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and mundane workflows in their daily lives and attempt to innovate them. If the leadership listens in, they will act on the change force. Otherwise, they will be limited in the leadership bubble they created. The backlash of standardization is that it keeps innovation limited, as people are not rewarded for trying to accomplish a task by trying something new. More than not, they are told to do as documented.
As Param Kahlon, Chief Product Officer at UiPath, mentioned in the Masters of Automation podcast, an agile mindset pushes companies forward by standardizing their processes while looking at opportunities to improve, innovate and build products continuously. The future of work technologies like low-code / no-code, automation, or process mining, re-invent the roles and enable people to become app builders by upskilling their workforce. When investments are made in agility, an organization can seek to build new tools or change how they interact with its processes.
Interestingly enough, the relevance of your skillset depends on the current job market in the country you are based. To be continuously more valuable in the market, an employee must adapt to the changes in technology and adopt new skills. For example, you’d notice that we do not have many carpenters anymore but have many mechanics who build factory engines. Your skillset to make tools and applications and leverage AI and automation will be critical to transforming the organization you are in and bringing innovation. You may apply this to technology, particularly outsourcing. The organizations now do not want to outsource the processes to offshore locations but instead leverage RPA and Intelligent Automation to send processes to the cloud so that a software robot can execute them. It still creates job opportunities because now your workforce is building automation with technology instead of running repetitive processes.
How do you achieve upskilling & train your workforce?
Two ways work the best.
Understand the skills and define goals & targets
Define clear goals for teams to adopt a new skillset. We have seen financial controllers, accountants, and marketing assistants adopt the skill set required to build an automation solution. Anybody can learn; however, only a few can create reliable and durable automation robots.
Willingness to learn a new skill and incentives for them to pursue it, driven by more impactful fun work, better compensation, or promotions.
Time capacity to cultivate and develop the skills - 80/20 split at Google led to many innovations and new products like Google Chrome and Gmail. You can achieve similar innovation at your firm with time spent on automation and operational excellence.
How is the skill tie to broader career growth? You may offer RPA developer, Data Scientist, and Product Manager roles. The world may be moved away from your definition, and now the role encompasses Intelligent Automation, or you’d see Chief Automation Officers. Benchmark where you are because an educated mind will find a better place to innovate if you don't.
Define Culture & Organizational Habit Loops
To stay innovative, the company's culture needs to be based upon the concepts of continuous improvement, where everyone strives to be a better version of themselves while staying hungry for new information and trying new ways of doing things. A critical aspect of staying innovative is incentivizing learning new skill sets while offering your employees opportunities in classes, virtual courses, or more. You may not have enough time to explore new technologies, but surely you’d listen to someone studying. The human brain is a muscle; if you keep training the same muscle, it won’t get stronger, faster, or more intelligent.
At Ashling Partners, every year, there are annual Innovation Council, in which, based upon a meritocracy, teams would bring an idea forward to improve the company’s delivery through new products and offerings or simply new methodologies. In a meritocracy, the best idea wins, and allowing the entire company to change how things are done is a valuable pathway to staying innovative.
For ideas to be competitive, argumentative, and innovative, the organizational habit loops play an integral part too. If within your organization you don’t invest in the people’s development, knowledge growth, and exploring new skill areas like AI, ML, Process Mining, or Low Code / No Code, then the proposed ideas would not be forward-looking.
Disruptiveness
Software vendors like UiPath, Workato, Webflow, PixieBrix, and Bubble are building products that make it more accessible to create innovative solutions to change your work. As the tech stack evolves around access and democratization of knowledge, people’s work will also transform by eliminating tasks that are not wanted and making a point of entry into an unfamiliar job industry easier. For example, after spending a few weeks on a Bubble or Webflow training, you can set up a marketplace similar to Airbnb or build a faster and more robust website. Similarly, after completing the UiPath Academy courses, you can have bots read your emails and give you a report on how your tone and sentiment are in a conversation, etc. The use cases are limitless, and the learning is free.
The following quote stood out to me in Zero to One, “Most valuable businesses of the coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete.”
