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Automate to Innovate - Five Future of Work Trends

By Nancy Pekala, Vice President of Content Marketing and Strategy for Hinduja Global Solutions

The Great Resignation.  The Great Reshuffle.  The Great Reimagination.  The Great Reprioritization.   Whatever name you give the massive labor shifts that have been occurring this year, one thing is clear.  Organizations in every industry are grappling with the fallout of a flood of employee resignations and the resulting labor shortfalls.

In this past August alone, a record 4.3 million employees quit their jobs while multiple polls report that half of employees are actively looking for a job.

As a result, the labor churn has left many businesses with no choice but to ramp up their automation efforts.  A recent survey found that 3 in 4 business owners are turning to automation in an effort to permanently reduce labor needs.  Research from the IBM Institute for Business Value further reveals that the pandemic has advanced the need for digital transformation in 59% of surveyed organizations.

Moving into 2022, businesses will be increasingly leveraging sustainable solutions to automate work, improve employee experience and maintain productivity.  Automated processes can address routine tasks, allowing remaining employees to focus on the core job functions that matter most and perform work in a more efficient, cost-effective manner.

As the future of work evolves in 2022, here are 5 key trends that can effectively be addressed with automation.

1.      Cultivating culture of collaboration in a work-from-anywhere environment.

Prompted by the pandemic and the resulting flood of resignations, companies will spend 2022 prioritizing the employee experience and creating quality employee experiences to ensure they feel valued.

Organizations will need to proactively focus on building a sense of belonging in a workforce that is increasingly dispersed, global and mobile.  According to Deloitte's Future of Work study, more than two-thirds of those surveyed believe that company culture will have a critically important impact on their organization's ability to realize its mission and vision.

This means organizations will need to increasingly provide digital collaboration tools that can foster communication and cultural teaming.  Indeed, more than two-thirds of executives are predicting a move away from email and toward more sophisticated tools, with virtual teaming capabilities across cultures representing a significant trend in the next five years.

2.      Reducing reliance on institutional knowledge.

The labor churn has companies looking to automation solutions to rely less on institutional knowledge.  A recent  PwC's U.S. Pulse Survey found that about half of executives want to reduce their dependence upon workers' institutional knowledge over the next 12 to 18 months. 

Leveraging Cognitive Productivity Automaton (CPA) solutions can help generate data-based institutional knowledge across the organization. Using artificial intelligence, CPA "trains" itself to perform specific tasks without requiring users to switch applications.  CPA's ability to adapt to individual processes - without engineering involvement - makes the solution invaluable in handling a high volume of small processes applied to unstructured data.

Additionally, applying an Enterprise Information Management (EIM) strategy to process and data management, organizations can retain hard-earned institutional knowledge while creating a foundation to deploy scalable solutions, such as work automation and business intelligence, that deliver a competitive advantage.

3.      Moving from siloed automation to communities of practice.

Automation communities of practice provide a sense of belonging supported by a foundation of shared goals.  Moving forward, many organizations will transition from a siloed automation approach to one focusing on the creation of automation communities of practice.  Instead of tasks being manually executed or even automated in isolated pockets of an organization, an automation community of practice lets everyone share their best ideas and build on each other's work.

Automation communities of practice can help identify and resolve gaps within the organization, discuss and disseminate developments in the field and efficiently reuse assets that can lower expenses.  For example, automation quality assurance engineers that might have been spread across multiple departments in an organization can define their community of practice to maintain and improve automation best practices across the entire enterprise.

4.      Facilitation of access to data to improve document processing.

Improvements in productivity will be tied, in part, to the ability of employees to access reams of critical data and documents.  Digital Intelligence company ABBYY found that 61% of employees report their job is made more difficult by an inability to easily access data in documents.  Nearly a quarter report losing a full day of productivity a week searching for information to serve customers.  Adopting AI-powered workflow automation solutions can help improve productivity and enhance employee experience.

5.      Improvement of transparency in communications.

In dispersed, work-from-anywhere environments, the need to keep everyone informed with announcements, shifting policies and company messaging will become more critical.  Remote workers can feel excluded from the rest of the company when missing out on important communication. The Deloitte Future of Work survey found that 42 percent of leaders report that putting in place more efficient decision-making structures and tools is a critical culture change they expect to see within the next two years.

The time is now for organizations to plan for the future of work. Digital transformation strategies that include process automation to help enhance employee communication, collaboration and productivity are critical to remaining competitive in volatile labor markets.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nancy Pekala is the Vice President of Content Marketing and Strategy for Hinduja Global Solutions, focusing on and leading content strategy, development and engagement for digital transformation, innovation and technology solutions. Prior to this role, Nancy has held a number of executive content leadership positions including at Grant Thornton, where she focused on innovation, technology advisory services and digital transformation. She also has served as a content, digital and social media consultant for a variety of brands in the finance, education and nonprofit industries.