Automation in the Workplace: the Hidden Burden of Manual tasks and how Digitisation can Help

Manual tasks still steer many tech companies. But is automation on the brink of changing workplaces everywhere?

Photo by Alex Kotliarskyi on Unsplash

In 1948, an Oldsmobile became the first model ever to use a true automatic transmission. The Hyrda-Matic, developed by GM engineers, was a game-changer. It wasn’t the first automatic transmission, but it was the first one that really worked. With its simplicity and ease of use, it offered the automobile to the masses, paving the way for an increasingly mobile workforce.

Today, many tech companies all over the world face a similar turning point. As of 2021, knowledge workers still spent a staggering 60 % of their time in repetitive, manual tasks such as hunting down emails and managing shifting priorities. Despite popular belief, most workers actually see automation in a positive light and are keen to take advantage of it. 

So what is holding tech companies back?

What are manual tasks and why do they matter?

In recent years, companies of all sizes and sectors have introduced new communication tools and collaboration channels, hoping to gain productivity and beat the competition. As a side effect, information has become increasingly fragmented. Responsibilities–as well as office hours–faded. Many teams, and their work, have become siloed. 

Workers responded by putting in the hours to make do at unnecessary meetings, answering emails and searching for documents and files. These manual tasks cause companies to waste time, effort, and resources at the cost of productivity, and ultimately, employee engagement. 

From data entry to copy-pasting information and simply duplicating tasks, there are several productivity-killing tasks that keep the business running. Most of these are monotonous, low-level, often repetitive tasks could be automated in order to leave more time for value-added activities. 

As a result, only 27% of the time is dedicated to the skilled craft that employees have been trained and hired to do. Most of the time is spent on activities such as communicating about tasks, searching for information documents, and duplicated work. According to recent estimates, only 13% of the working time is allocated to strategic planning and forward-looking analysis. 

Tech companies are no exception. Only about one-third of tasks are currently automated across IT functions, with security, compliance and application lifecycle management the biggest areas weighing down teams. Nearly half of large enterprises are fulfilling key tasks on a completely manual basis.

For example, traditional HR departments repeat the same employee onboarding process each time a company welcomes a new hire. Customer support teams reply to similar user questions and requests. And on it goes for payroll, invoicing and expense management, making these prime candidates for automation. 

Work management solutions with automation capabilities enable teams to spend less time on manual tasks. From automatically assigning tasks to relevant teammates and syncing calendars with deadlines, simple automation can make everyone’s day easier and more productive. 

What are the benefits of automation? 

According to a McKinsey & Company research, about 60% of all occupations have at least 30% of activities that could be automated. If implemented, automation could lead to various operational benefits, including better quality of operations, superior data accuracy, and better compliance. 

TOP BENEFITS OF AUTOMATION

Source: Asana

Another key benefit stems from improved employee motivation. After all, unbalanced workload growth is the primary source of stress for a quarter of employees. When organizations don’t manage individual and team workloads effectively, employee performance and retention are negatively affected. 

Even basic forms of automation can make an enormous difference in cost savings and employee motivation. Basic automation involves simple, repetitive tasks that are easy to understand and organize. To maximize those savings, basic automation can be used for high-volume activities, tasks that take time and are prone to human error and areas where quality has been inconsistent.

Taking automation one step further involves more specialized and sophisticated tasks, such as scanning emails for specific information. This type of Intelligent Automation is usually more expensive, but the savings increase over time. 

In any case, automated processes offer increased clarity on users’ roles, higher efficiency, scalability, compliance and accountability–with the potential to dramatically change how key processes are executed.

Which processes are likely candidates for automation?

Time-consuming and business-critical, employee onboarding, payroll and legal are 3 key processes to consider as the next automation priorities. 

EMPLOYEE ONBOARDING AUTOMATION

Automating onboarding results in a 16% higher retention rate for new hires. In a modern enterprise, onboarding should be an automated, end-to-end journey that focuses on giving the employee an optimal experience and gets your company past the hurdles of siloed systems and manual processes.

Automation allows HR teams to create an onboarding journey that is tailored to the new employee’s role and needs. For HR managers, the process could be as simple as choosing a role to onboard from a menu, and further refining the journey and tasks with a series of pre-configured role-specific options.

An onboarding application can orchestrate tasks with the company’s existing systems, issue service tickets to the appropriate departments, route documents for signature and approval, and schedule introductory meetings. That complexity is handled automatically in the background. Automation can make the onboarding process more efficient, and agile, while also providing users with an experience that is welcoming, personalised, and effortless.

PAYROLL AUTOMATION

Payroll is essentially the business process of paying employees. It comprises calculating employee earnings and accounting for payroll taxes. Although it’s imperative for every business, the cost of payroll is high, and learning these processes takes a lot of time and effort. 

For many business owners and HR Managers, payroll is a headache, and, especially in a remote world, it is easy to see why. In the US alone, there are over 10,000 tax jurisdictions and that's not even addressing the fact that many tax laws change constantly. 

Businesses can automate their tax filing as part of payroll automation to meet tight deadlines and avoid penalties for non-compliance. Payroll automation offers businesses a variety of other benefits, too. It can cut down on data gathering, information processing, disbursement and reporting. 

When companies hire in new countries, miscalculating timelines, and underestimating potential costs are common mistakes. With BRIDGE IN you can start hiring and employing in full compliance. Start building your own operating system to fully manage your distributed company from anywhere, anytime. Sign up for our waiting list to get the first release of our product.

LEGAL AUTOMATION

Legal automation allows companies to streamline, automate, manage and measure legal tasks, such as reviewing documents, creating routine contracts, searching through emails and collecting signatures. It can also help teams stitch together various manual processes to help make common workflows scalable. This might be something like the intake and triage of new queries and assigning legal matters their right level of priority.

Without having to spend hours on admin and paperwork, lawyers have more time to do the strategic, commercial work they are trained for. It also helps to reduce duplicated tasks–so long as having to draft up the same NDA day after day. Automating legal processes also allows teams to do more with less. If routine tasks can be automated, that might allow businesses to avoid an additional headcount. 

Just like the automatic transmission did for cars, a new breed of automation tools makes work environments happier and more productive. Organizations can automate work processes and free up workers to focus on more valuable and creative work. What innovative tasks could your employees produce if they weren’t bogged down by red tape? While you focus on scaling your business, BRIDGE IN takes care of payroll, benefits, workforce management and all HR-related matters. Get in touch to see what we can do for your business.