Staff retention and wellbeing is driving automation
The world we live in today is very much in a constant state of change, with what we considered the normal way of working only a few years ago feeling like a lifetime away.
Our new world is one dominated by hybrid working for employees, which means companies need to create a working environment for both the virtual and the non-virtual employee in their business and create an environment that works for all to retain the best staff available, in what is an increasingly limited talent pool.
Part of what drives employee satisfaction is a meaningful work-life balance regardless of where they are based. If your staff feel like they are contributing positively to their business and making a difference, you will get the most out of that employee. The same goes for those valuable and high-potential/high-skilled employees that every business has and wants to keep hold of.
This can come down to the mundane and repetitive nature of people’s work. For 2023 there is an ever-increasing need for businesses to focus and analyse where these tasks exist, whether these are internally facing, or maybe externally customer facing depending on the industry.
Think of your finance staff approving all orders manually regardless of amount. Or for your staff providing support for absolutely any question via your ecommerce site. Maybe your staff have to manually work out procurement of new hardware for staff despite only a few variations in the roles that exist, or it could be as much as tracking inventory by hand and notifying other departments when stock levels need actions taken.
…while unemployment was nearly back to pre-pandemic levels, the UK’s labour pool had also ‘shrunk dramatically”
Kirstie Donnelly, CEO of City & Guilds
https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1751795/firms-will-work-even-harder-attract-talent-unemployment-falls-experts-warn
The repetitive and the mundane exist everywhere in businesses, and the question you need to ask is can you afford your staff to be performing these?
Your staff have incredible knowledge for your business and losing them not only loses key individuals for their skills, but the knowledge they have of your business is often overlooked, and takes a lot of time, money, and effort to build that back up.
Elimination of the mundane and the repetitive business wide may seem obvious, but with the state of the markets for skilled workers in 2022 and 2023 especially, this is now a serious disruptor for all major industries with a shrinking and minimal talent pool.
This is where some businesses struggle due to the legacy nature of the services or the backend IT capabilities, where more modern companies, such as “born in the cloud” might seemingly have an advantage.
Over 70% of C-Suite leaders now say they want to play a role in talent acquisition decisions, a clear indication of the increasing pressure to align talent acquisition and retention with business goals"
In truth, when embracing automation for your business processes your age of systems or processes is largely irrelevant in a modern world. Automation needs to work for all, and those capabilities are now here – and accelerating.
From businesses still using Mainframes, to where legacy applications have no API or programmatic access that can only be accessed by connecting to remote desktops, these are now all open to possibilities which should no longer be used as an excuse or barrier to embracing your competitiveness with automation.
Did you know?
IA-Connect from LABS provides business process automation to the masses and works with Microsoft Power Automate, Blue Prism or PowerShell.
IA-Connect gives businesses unique advantages over other similar solutions as it works locally as well as having 100% functionality remotely via Citrix or remote desktop, without the need for remote agents to be installed – an industry first.
