Today, both small and large businesses are always seeking ways to streamline their processes and operations with the primary goal of increasing workforce productivity. Automation, for example, is one of the technological advancements being used by many companies today to make that happen.
Automation is proven to help address the growing demand to carry out labor-intensive and complex tasks that manual processes can’t handle anymore. This technology, however, is not actually designed and encouraged to replace human employees like what most organizations believe. It is, in fact, a way to boost productivity, minimize errors, and lower operational costs. Let’s go through some effective strategies for introducing automation culture in your organization.
1. Change the mindset
Automation should never be considered a replacement. It’s an augmentation that works at its best with paid with humans. So, to successfully implement automation in your workplace, you need to first shift to the mindset. Promote the importance of robot-human collaboration to your team. This will help your staff to look at this change as an opportunity to improve in their work and make their lives easier.
If you want to avoid resistance to the implementation, focus on making them understand their outcomes with robots. For instance, you can emphasize that the software robots will handle tedious, repetitive tasks while working on higher-order problems. The primary goal is to ensure your people won’t worry about getting replaced by robots.
2. Emphasize the need for collaboration
There are tons of businesses and individuals out there that believe automation is a potential replacement for the human workforce. For such reason, it’s your job to emphasize the importance of collaboration between the software robots and your employees. In the process of introducing a new automation system, focus on the problems that it can solve within your company and the benefits it can give to your workforce.
For instance, if you’ll be investing in collaborative robot vision cameras, focus on the specific, repetitive tasks it can do. These may include detecting product defects more accurately and providing a safer work environment by reducing on-site accidents. Such kind of automation technology requires the collaboration of human workers to function, so focus on that. Doing so will encourage your staff to take an active part in the implementation process.
3. Reskill your employees
While automation robots are not designed to replace the human workforce, there are, of course, tasks that they will take over. These include routine and repetitive tasks such as grouping files, backing up data, and invoice or email reminders. Given this, you must support your staff in building new transferable skills useful in other aspects or areas of your company.
To help your employees acquire the knowledge and skill set requires for the new tasks or roles, you can offer them training sessions or workshops. It’s best to base the training on complex judgment, communication skills, and creativity. Make it clear that personal development and professional growth go hand in hand too.
4. Focus on continuous learning
Regardless if you’ll be implementing a robot vision system, a programmable logic controller, or any time of automation technology, process improvement is necessary. Launching the software to your workplace or giving your employees access is not the end of the road. It’s never a one-and-done situation.
You will need to monitor, evaluate, and improve the automation process you create. This is vital for improving the experience of the end-users and optimizing overall performance. Let business process experts do the job of analyzing the new system or software. They can recommend re-designs or modifications to improve your processes.
5. Share positive results with your team
Sharing the good news regarding the effective implementation of the new system is crucial for celebrating the scaling of your automation to the enterprise level. Spread the initial positive results to your team and discuss them. At the same time, this will encourage excitement for the benefits that are yet to come, such as improved operational efficiency and cost reduction. Passing on the results is also a great way to let employees feel they are part of the digitization plan.
By implementing a culture of automation in your organization, you can effectively reduce labor costs, optimize workforce allocation, and minimize human errors. What’s more? It even allows you to flexibly adapt to the changing demands and conditions in the market. Give your organization the competitive edge to stay on top of the modern marketplace by cultivating an automation culture.
