Lessons From the Early-Adopters in AI: How to Land an Automation Project Successfully

I had the privilege of chairing a series of discussions at the RPA & AI Global Summit 27-29 Nov 2017 giving the chance to listen to the experiences of those who have pioneered ground-breaking change this year bringing robots, chatbots, and task automation to life within shared services/head office support teams. Attendees linked to household brands shared inspiring examples of where dull and routine tasks have been offloaded onto machines.

Whilst 2017 marks the year that RPA (robotic process automation) became mainstream, it is early days yet and the learning curve has been steep and at times uncomfortable. There have been some unexpected realisations from the early adopter organisations that those about to embark on an office automation change could learn from.  Here are some lessons I gathered from listening to leaders (job titles include Global Head of Artificial Intelligence etc) who have had successful and unsuccessful attempts to robotize their workplace in 2017.  People in the world of employee engagement and HR have the opportunity to play a helpful role but we need to get in there quick as its happening now.

What has been considered ground-breaking in 2017 will rapidly become the norm so we need to be thinking now about how we can minimise the stress that many people associate with disruption.

By taking the learning from running front-line engagement programmes when listening to the challenges from those pioneering this mechanisation of work, here are 5 considerations for landing an automation project successfully and sustainably:

1. Decide your full and complete organisational story before you lurch into automation. If you cannot answer ‘why are we actually doing this?’ within a sentence then people will automatically associate this change with job loss. Given the worldwide press on this, it would be naïve for them not too. If it is genuinely to enhance the customer experience then every board member needs to be sharing the language of this storyline. ‘Hours back’ is the language used by those companies where the automation has been embraced by shared services teams this year

2. Invite people to co-create the outcome from the start and explain in an adult way the need for change. Questions such as, ‘What gets in the way of you being able to do your job?’ will highlight win/wins to achieve better outcomes and less grumpy workers. In cases where this was done, teams are coming in their droves to the techies to beg them to automate more. A great way to raise employee engagement levels as long as people feel they have agency in the process. The difference between anxiety at being lost or adrenaline whilst exploring is whether you chose to embark on the journey

3. Focus on getting the IT team on board. (I was shocked to hear that 60% of global cyber attacks are an inside job). Empower them by asking them to be part of the evolution by collaborating more with the other office functions so they are ready about how to use this beautiful new machine you are creating for them. You may be about to give the keys to a Porsche to a hundreds of learner drivers and your IT team could be the best asset you have to fast-track their learning curve

4. Watch the use of the word Robot. You personally may find it an exciting word but for many it triggers a fear response. Be mindful of how you use of scientific, bionic, humanoid robot imagery – pictures of happy people leaving work on time is more likely to inspire people to consider than a photo of a skeletal robot hand on a woman’s shoulder. This is not about patronizing people, but any childhood that involved watching Terminator will influence how non-technical people connect with the robotics industry

5. Use the word Evolve rather than Change. The term change management triggers an inherent feeling that the current way is bad. And that someone’s current effort is not good enough. But you would not have got to the Now had they not laboured for you Then. The word ‘evolve’ gives a respectful nod to the past as being a way to learn towards a better future

In short, it is all about the people. Borrow the learning of the automation pioneers in 2017 and spend a chunk of time at the start to land this right. Democratising access to software means an 18-24 month IT project can now be surpassed by an opensource bot taking 4-6 weeks to embed, means it’s the pace of change that is the biggest challenge here.  

The tech people have now seen the reality of the potential for change as it is being brought to life with front-line teams, and I was surprised by the number of discussions about the inevitable implications this will have on society. We need to wake up and smell the fear that surrounds this emerging world of work. The desire to use robots and AI to automate manual and repetitive office admin tasks is here to stay and it is upon us in the people functions do this in a responsible and humane way as we transport people towards a different kind of work.

2018 can be where HR and the Learning & Development functions can play their part in helping people adjust and adapt to the environmental changes by encouraging the mindset of fluidity and learning. There is now limited value in using a real human to do routine, repetitive rule-based work that a cognitive machine can do.

Next stop? The education system. 

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Laura Thomson-Staveley is founder and leadership coach at Phenomenal Training and co-host of Secrets from A Coach podcast. For more information visit: phenomenaltraining.com and secretsfromacoach.com