24 Aug
Generally, employers are skeptical about remote working. There’s a cynical notion of demotivated, disinterested employees who are unaccountable and unfocused. There’s an assumption that face-to-face collaboration is essential in progressing projects and making key decisions. The reality is, we now have technology that can increase productivity at work and deliver efficient, effective remote team management.
Furthermore, it can revolutionize our attitude to working, and to life in general. In essence, it gives us freedom.
What Is Automation?
Automation utilizes AI and robotic process automation (RPA) tools to perform repetitive and menial tasks. This offers myriad benefits to both employees and employers.
Tasks are done more quickly and efficiently and with greater consistency. This reduces or eliminates the risk of human error completely.
Benefits for Employees
There is an assumption that remote working means working from home. In fact, remote working means working anywhere except the office. With the aid of a laptop, wifi connection, and the right online fax services, you can have a productive day’s work virtually anywhere.
You won’t be dragged into long and meaningless meetings. You are free from the pitfalls of office politics and petty conflict. You can create your own perfect working environment with all the benefits and resources you get in the office.
Moreover, you can reduce your commute time to a few seconds, and your additional expenses to $0 – unless you prefer a quick jaunt to the coffee shop.
Benefits For Employers
The lack of distractions is beneficial to employers too. Remote working reduces stress and boosts productivity. Without the everyday interruptions and diversions that come with office work, you have the ability to get into a flow. You can focus on the projects that matter with an increased level of engagement. This enhances the quality and quantity of your work and boosts employee morale.
In fact, these tools can benefit businesses even if you’re not working remotely.
If you are to embrace the concept of remote working, there is yet another set of benefits. It eliminates the boundary of geography. You are now free to employ the best people for each role, globally. Cast your net worldwide to establish an elite international workforce, rich in culture and experience. And with the increased employee retention that remote working brings, you’ll experience greater employee satisfaction and retention rates.
Add to that the major PR wins of a reduced carbon footprint plus a truly diverse global team—the money you save by reducing office space will get your CEO smiling too.
It’s worth noting that automation can help organizations of all sizes, from global blue-chip company systems to small business productivity apps.
Let’s explore some of the practical solutions that automation provides.
Solutions that Automation Provides
Managing Employees and Workflow
Remote working means reduced face-to-face contact. This is a major obstacle for many business decision-makers. There is a legacy assumption that to remain motivated, staff need a manager looming over them with a stick in one hand and a carrot in the other. This notion is archaic.
Time Management
Automation means you can easily track your team’s schedule and assign projects accordingly with employee monitoring software. Employees know what their goals, objectives, and deadlines are, and you can automate scheduled reminders. Afterward, employees then acknowledge the prompt and have the option to request help if required.
With QA testing automation, your IT department can focus on cybersecurity measures that could save you millions. Automation also means your marketing department can analyze SEO competition and develop solutions that drive business. HR can also introduce new measures that maintain the well-being of your staff. Your helpdesk can specialize in resolving complex technical inquiries.
That’s because IT support, email campaigns, vacation requests, and customer support automation can be resolved with technology. Limit human intervention to situations that require complex involvement or changes to the system.
Monitoring Employees and Projects
Keep on top of remote team management with employee productivity monitoring software. This keeps lines of communication open between management and staff.
Transparency
Automation helps keep workers engaged and focused when working remotely by reducing continuous repetitive tasks. You can then monitor productivity per hour worked, to measure the real-world benefits of automation. More work can be done, to a better standard, in less time—which frees up workers to refresh and update their existing skills and develop new talents.
Managers can monitor screen time with a productivity time tracker app—for many modern organizations, goal-oriented monitoring is the best measure of productivity.
You can also keep track of tasks and projects with a workflow platform. Most of these are low-code or no-code and integrate seamlessly with collaboration tools, which helps you make easy work of automating and tracking multiple jobs.
Employee Well-Being and Engagement
With the right technology, you can emphasize employee wellbeing in your company. Although one-to-one contact is reduced, automation can actually increase staff engagement as well as streamlining remote team management by tracking productivity.
You can gather feedback without the need for time-consuming meetings, and easily gauge your staff’s workload before they potentially become stressed or overwhelmed. Staff can ask for help when they need it, which offers reassurance and peace of mind to all involved. Deadline reminders ensure that no project gets forgotten and workflows remain smooth.
Availability Status
You might be on a break, on vacation, in a meeting, or simply concentrating on a complex project. With automation, you can easily alert colleagues as to your availability. In this regard, as with many others, automation enables autonomy.
Asynchronous Working
Many organizations are embracing asynchronous working. This involves limiting communications to a single daily window. This reduces chit-chat and drives productivity. There will then be a clear distinction between work and home life. You won’t be expected to answer business emails or messages during office hours.
People are more productive when they are less stressed. Asynchronous communication provides these benefits, with remote workers using automation to set their available hours and communicate them to colleagues.
Collaboration and Communication
As with employee well-being, automation can reduce collaboration time whilst increasing the quality of communications. You can speak to relevant parties for as long as necessary, with minimal toing and froing—and access colleagues at the touch of a button.
Use messaging apps to collaborate with multiple parties on a project. And, with a virtual fax number, you can even receive faxes to your desktop or mobile app. Any newcomers will have a record of decision-making, from the initial stages onward and will easily be able to receive all important information.
You can integrate systems across all departments using business process management (BPM). BPM is a process for unifying systems across your organization, which helps everyone to collaborate and access the information they need.
Meetings Made Easier
Automation can transform your outlook on meetings. There is now no need to book a meeting room, gather everyone around a table, set up a projector, organize catering, and print off notes and agendas. Everyone is already in their perfect meeting room environment. With the best VoIP providers, HD video, crystal clear sound, and screen-sharing capabilities, holding meetings becomes a much easier process.
Add new members to meetings at the touch of a button. Share agendas in the cloud where participants can add items or make suggestions. Schedule regular or repeat meetings. There is also the option to record or transcribe meetings for absent colleagues and for posterity.
Confidentiality With Confidence
Remote communications can be more confidential, and sometimes they can be more meaningful, too. In a busy work environment, it can be challenging to approach sensitive subjects and have difficult discussions. With remote collaboration, you can speak your mind, secure in the knowledge that no one is eavesdropping. Those involved can give their full attention to the conversation, without unleashing a tidal wave of office gossip.
Social Media
You can automate and schedule your social posts to keep in touch with your clients. Any likes or shares can be automatically logged and recorded. This is a form of process management and employs the use of a software bot.
Implementation
The ease with which you can roll out automation across your organization will depend on many factors. Specifically, it will depend on the systems you already have in place. You may be able to implement automation systems relatively quickly and efficiently. You may have to consult RPA guides to integrate your legacy systems and transition to new ones.
Some solutions may require complex customization from your IT department and several rounds of software functional testing to get it up and running. But many employ drag-and-drop functionality and no-code automation for easy and responsive functionality.
Of course, remote working might be impractical or impossible for some staff. But even these people might benefit from one day of remote working per week, for example. They can fully focus on complex tasks, and finish miscellaneous jobs that can fall by the wayside in a busy work environment.
Less Black Mirror, More White Light
Traditionally, employees are skeptical of automation. There is a cynical sense of the machines taking over and replacing us. Doing our jobs cheaper, more efficiently, and better. They don’t get sick. They don’t ask for time off. They don’t forget to attach documents to an email. They don’t write increasingly implausible lists to meet a word count.
The reality is that automation can relieve us of menial, repetitive tasks. The tasks we don’t enjoy. The tasks we get wrong because we lose concentration.
This liberates us to fulfill more meaningful and productive work. In essence, it allows us to be more human.
Author’s bio:
Austin Guanzon is the Tier 1 Support Manager for Dialpad, the leading AI-powered customer intelligence platform. He is a customer retention and technical support expert, with experience at some of the largest tech service companies in the US. Austin is also the co-founder of the California-based Infinity Martial Arts and has served as an instructor in the sport. You can find him on LinkedIn.
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