What Are You Afraid Of?
Most who first hear of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) instantly express concerns. What sort of fears arise, you ask? Cue explosions and scenes of mass chaos with the Terminator appearing through the smoke. Ok, so no, this will not lead to a scene from iRobot or Westworld. However, there are common concerns such as the concern of the robot not performing the way it was designed leading to it manipulating, destroying, or sharing private data. One of the most common concerns is human jobs will be replaced by robots and other technology. When you first think about RPA, these may seem plausible. However, when these robots are created by a trained professional there is little to no risk involved at all.
First, these robots do not do anything they are not specifically told to do. They follow a straightforward, step by step, path to complete whatever task the RPA developer told them to do. The only risk involved for your data is if the developer or architect had malicious intent or made a drastic miscalculation or oversight. This also disproves the worry of hearing Arnold Schwarzenegger yelling, “Get to the choppa,” or any other scene from a robot-takeover movie. Though there may be some algorithms applied to the RPA development, which essentially lets the robot make decisions, it still must follow the specific set of instructions laid out. These robots cannot create their own rules to follow and ‘think’ outside of the limits the developer provides. These two common concerns are not of concern as long as you hire a careful and trained developer or architect.
The most common concern is that these RPA tools will replace human jobs. In a way, they can. But, this is a good thing! They only replace jobs that are very process-driven, tedious, repetitive, and for lack of another adjective, boring. I have experienced firsthand the outcome of these boring jobs being automated. The company I work for recently introduced RPA development. Naturally, some of my coworkers, who were handling these very tedious tasks, became worried they were being taken out with the garbage. However, they soon realized that their jobs were not replaced at all. Their jobs just evolved to take on work that was not so boring. It was not long before these employees actually began praising the RPA development team and coming up with more ideas of what to automate. Automating their uninteresting tasks offered them more rewarding careers. This led to improved moral as well which, as we all know, improves work ethic and motivation. Not only did RPA automate tasks which saves money, but it also improved workers lives and work performance.
These common concerns do seem to have merit when you look at Robotic Process Automation from a distance. However, when you dig into the nuts and bolts of these robots, there is very little to be concerned with. The actual concerns you should have is who you hire to create these robots and how you present the changes to your employees. If you hire smart and present it to your employees with a strong change management approach, automating tasks will do nothing but improve your business and its people.
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