As the robotic process automation (RPA) industry continues to grow, more and more companies are relying on these solutions to streamline their processes a improve their customer interactions.

However, clients aren’t the only group of people who can benefit from RPA solutions. The employees can benefit too.

Software robots are not meant to steal a human worker’s job. Instead, they are continuing to become more reliable and considered far more appreciated by their human counterparts.

So, what does RPA do for the employees? And how do they actually impact them and the work they do?

Read on to learn more!

If you’ve been reading Digital Workforce Solutions’ blogs for a while, you know that there are a lot of reasons to adopt an RPA solution. Some of these reasons include cost optimization, greater accuracy, improved cycle times, increased compliance, and much more.

Although there are a bunch of organizations that are using RPA solutions to cut the number of human workers they have, please know that this is the wrong reason to implement RPA.

RPA is supposed to push the human worker towards better performance. It’s not meant to replace them entirely. When a human worker and an RPA solution are coupled, the RPA solution can take over the mundane and repetitive tasks that take up so much of the human’s time, allowing them to work on more important tasks that take more critical thinking.

RPA solutions are great when they are paired with an employee, but they make the customer experience better as well.

UiPath did an extensive survey about what organizations were expecting from their RPA solutions, and 85% of them said that they expected improved customer service to be one of the top three benefits.

Most organizations believe that customer satisfaction is about giving customers what they want. This is a pretty big change from the old-school customer-first idea because proper automation and quality customer services are actually more about the employee experience.

When overworked and unsatisfied employees are working in an unproductive work environment, it’s even harder to maintain a satisfied customer base.

One of the things that are always brought up in the automation debate is that automation will put people out of their jobs. There have been hundreds of headlines over the last twenty years that have claimed this.

When this is always being talked about, a lot of fear sets in for the human workers, and this fear can build up inside of a workforce and lead to failure when an RPA solution is implemented.

In UiPath’s survey, over 80% of companies said that change management was always a challenge, even more so when there are cultural problems.

When there are changes in a business, it’s never an easy process. However, if you plan, come up with a solid change management program, provide exceptional training, communicate, and collaborate, employers and managers will be able to play off of the positive impact that an RPA solution can have on the employees.

The fact of the matter is that RPA helps employees be incredibly effective in the work that they complete.

It’s no surprise that employees are happier when they have the right tools to complete the tasks that they have, so it’s in the employer to make sure that they are well-equipped for what they need to work on.

Managers should also make the idea of an engaged workforce a reality in order for a company to get the most out of a new or existing RPA solution.

The UiPath survey also reported that over half of the organizations saw improved employee engagement from RPA solutions. Some of the other benefits include increased efficiency, deeper knowledge about the customer base, as well as improved customer service.

Many of these organizations said that once they started using an RPA solution, they saw an increase in the value of their employees.

A way to think about is that even though human workers are doing repetitive, robotic jobs, they are clearly not robots.

What usually ends up happening is that a company puts in one RPA solution and then the implementation starts to spread rapidly.

Once this happens, the employers realize that employees are performing at a much higher rate and working more effectively.

When an employer implements RPA, they remove the need for human workers to complete mundane tasks, and they can focus on work that is more important and fulfilling. Their sense of purpose and belonging blossoms even more, and they are more likely to stay in their position for a longer amount of time.

RPA has become huge in venture capital and private equity organizations because automation can expand across so many industries, locations, and service lines.

Of course, if we look at RPA from a larger scale, the idea is that every employee across the world would have one RPA bot assigned to them so they can work alongside one another.

When you analyze the value of RPA, it’s important that you look at more than just the impact that it has had on a few companies.

You shook look at how RPA can be used to satisfy employees and also impact the future of the job positions of your company.

It shouldn’t be a sign of unemployment; rather, RPA solutions should be viewed as a tool for empowering your workforce and your job offerings.

When you look back in time, there were many decades when almost everyone worked on the land.

Today, only less than 5% work on the land, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else is unemployed.

What this means is that artificial intelligence and automation will lead to more jobs because new methods of working (like all the hybrid work we’ve seen during the pandemic) will become normalized.

There may be a reduction in people doing lower-level jobs, but this will be balanced out by the increase in people working in more prestigious positions and providing better customer service.

As businesses get closer to their customers, it’s not crazy to think that customer intimacy will become the most important thing that sets companies apart.

RPA lets employees have more human interactions with the customers, and when you have a satisfied and close customer base, your RPA solutions and your business will both succeed.

To learn more about RPA and what it can do for your company, get in contact with a Digital Workforce Solutions representative today!