Want agentic productivity? People-centric automation is the way forward

As AI and automation continue to transform the workplace, organizations need to consider how technologies can not only support the time-consuming and repetitive tasks that take up much of a worker’s day , but also how they can give these workers the means to achieve their goals. full potential. In other words, organizations must implement automation with people first. This model goes beyond using automation only to streamline processes: it also views AI and automation as a way to complement human skills so that workers can thrive with these technologies as companions.

This is especially crucial in the new era of agentic automation, in which robots, agents and people come together to achieve enterprise-wide AI transformation.

People-centric automation is a practice that continues to spread across all industries. The idea is to give workers access to tools powered by the combination of AI and automation to help them with their tasks and improve their development while allowing them to apply technology where they need it. wish. Empowering employees to take control of how they use these technologies allows them to make the most of their skills.

The advantages of this solution are obvious. Automating lower-value but time-consuming tasks with employee participation not only makes processes more efficient, but also gives employees the opportunity to work on larger, more strategic projects, thereby improving job satisfaction. For example, Nest Bankwhich offers mobile banking services to entrepreneurs, has implemented automation and AI to facilitate simple manual processes such as closing inactive accounts, helping customers open new accounts and providing assistance with examination of loan applications. Freed from these repetitive tasks, Nest Bank saved more than 400,000 hours of labor and productivity, allowing it to shift its staff to more meaningful and creative work that they actually enjoyed, like finding ways to improve customer experience.

By allowing employees to participate in the process of identifying areas where these tools can be useful and integrating them into workflows, it becomes more likely that these implementations will be properly targeted and will maximally benefit the employees using them and the the organization.

The Biggest Benefits of People-Driven Automation

The benefits of AI and automation are well-documented: saving employee time, reducing errors, and saving costs through improved overall operational efficiency. People-centric automation takes this to another level, as employees who have the best visibility into specific tasks become part of the decision-making process as to where these advanced technologies should be applied. This means that the workers who know these tasks best are the ones who improve workflows.

Involving workers in the automation implementation process does not add a significant amount of work to an employee’s plate or contribute to burnout. Instead, it allows employees to contribute to the process of identifying and creating automation as they naturally encounter process improvement opportunities within their workflows, optimizing these implementations so that they are as efficient as possible in removing lower value tasks from their plates. This allows employees to focus on important work that AI and automation can’t do, like building relationships with partners and customers. For this reason, improving customer satisfaction is one of the benefits of a people-centric approach to implementing AI and automation.

If employees work with AI and automation that complement their skills, they can spend less time on mundane tasks and more time responding quickly and accurately to customer requests. If a client requests specific metrics on a recent campaign, for example, those numbers might be more readily available since the AI ​​and automation tool, created by the relevant team specifically to fit their workflow , has already analyzed and organized the data.

This gives the worker enough time to create and deliver a comprehensive and coherent presentation for the client, for example. Yet for these benefits to be realized, organizations must build employee buy-in to take advantage of these tools.

How to achieve people-centric automation

Although people-driven automation depends on integrating employees into the implementation process, they should not be expected to be experts in AI and automation. So, businesses must be proactive in providing the bots and agents they need to identify areas where these solutions can be applied.

Companies have several options for doing this, including offering training programs on these tools via online and on-demand videos or instructor-led group training sessions. Organizations should also have a way to measure the effectiveness of these educational tools, to know if they are improving their automation knowledge and encouraging employees to use automation and AI tools to their disposal. Finally, companies should offer employees a community portal to get answers to questions from colleagues and experts about these solutions.

People-centric automation is an important theme as businesses look to agentic automation to merge AI, automation, and orchestration for more complex and dynamic processes and workflows. People will work in tandem with bots and agents, allowing them to make faster and more informed decisions. In the agentic era, people are elevated and able to focus on being decision-makers, supervisors, and leaders. When thoughtfully integrated, these technologies complement human skills, improve job satisfaction and lead to exceptional customer experiences. The primary goal of organizations is to enable humans to reach their full potential, not just to streamline processes.

To learn more about people-centric automation and how it can help your organization, read this white paper on people-centered automation on the subject.