Embrace the future of human-machine collaboration today!

Zou Zuoji, Regional Vice President of UiPath Greater China*

Working with a robot assistant may sound like science fiction, but in 2022 it will be closer to reality than you think.

At the beginning of the year, the International Labor Organization released the World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2022 report. The report warns that the global labor market recovery will be slow and full of uncertainty due to the continued significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global labor market. Companies urgently need to find effective ways to mitigate the adverse effects of labor contraction and to make their businesses withstand the test of future development. In this context, software automation has become a disruptive tool for our transition to the future way of working. The popularity of automation is accelerating significantly. Forrester predicts that the global robotic process automation (RPA) market will reach US$22 billion by 2025, while the "2022 China RPA Procurement Guide" report released by alpha review shows that the scale of China's RPA market will reach 2.88 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 55.7% over 2020. More and more companies are beginning to prioritize investing in automation solutions to improve productivity through digitalization and automation of business processes.

As a result, we can expect that human-machine collaboration will become more commonplace over the next five years. People will work side by side with their virtual software assistants, sharing tasks and closely coordinating processes in their daily work.

As we move ever closer to this reality, ensuring that employees accept automation and learn to work with automated processes and digital assistants will be key. When robots take on low-skilled, monotonous and repetitive tasks, how can companies efficiently redeploy employees so that they are ready to take on new, high-skilled and more strategically valuable jobs has also become a new issue we face.

In the face of these imperatives, business leaders will need to focus on job redesign, redeployment plans, and develop upskilling, retraining, and hiring plans for the future. They also need to start simultaneously training employees in their daily work so that they can comfortably use automation technology in their daily work.

To achieve this, business leaders need to take four key actions:

1. Communicate the value of automation to employees

Simply implementing automation technology is not enough and will not lead to business success. Businesses also need employees to embrace these new tools to make their investment worthwhile, and this aspect depends on whether individuals truly understand the value of automation.

In addition to promoting the benefits of automation in terms of improving efficiency and productivity, business leaders should also emphasize that, contrary to popular belief, automation does not take away jobs, but only takes over manual and tedious operational activities such as data entry and other rule-based processes, giving employees more time to focus on more strategically valuable work. Having technology perform these duties can enable employees to advance into high-skilled positions and effectively advance their careers rather than hindering their progress.

2. Master new skills to prepare for the era of automation

In order to move existing employees into high-value roles, massive training will be required. In fact, business leaders predict that they will have to retrain one-third of their workforce in the next few years due to automation.

It will be critical to address this issue early by focusing on employee skills training. Our education and training policies must develop in-demand automation skills and provide upskilling opportunities to help employees keep pace with technological advances. Not only that, employees themselves must develop a continuous learning mindset to keep up with rapid technological changes and job adjustments.

On the other hand, companies also need to play their part in developing the next generation of employees. For example, UiPath's Academic Alliance Program provides important opportunities for students and professionals to receive education and skills enhancement in automation, so that they can take on more creative, strategic and fulfilling work skills in the future. In the Asia-Pacific region, the program has established partnerships with institutions in China, New Zealand, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia and the Philippines.

3. Richer training content

In addition to teaching technical skills, training opportunities must also include soft skills such as leadership, critical thinking, and adaptability. In the future work environment where robots and virtual assistants are able to take over monotonous, repetitive tasks, human traits will become a competitive advantage for the workforce. People will need to demonstrate skills such as creativity, leadership, communication, and flexibility, which robots cannot replace. A McKinsey study found that in order to prepare employees for the post-epidemic era, organizations are emphasizing training in people-centered skills such as leadership and the ability to manage others (more than 51%), critical thinking and decision-making (50%), project management (50%), and adaptability and continuous learning (40%).

4. Let employees play an active role in automation projects

In addition to teaching employees how to use the automation processes given to them by leadership, employees should also be trained on how to develop their own automation processes so that employees can play an active role in automation projects. This will cultivate employees' sense of autonomy over their workload; when employees know how to customize automation software to support specific work needs, they can create a completely personal way of working, thereby increasing productivity and job satisfaction.

For example, the low-code platform "UiPath Apps" launched by UiPath is one of the important tools for enterprises to implement the civilian developer strategy. The low-code solution it provides allows ordinary business users, even those without programming skills, to easily develop their own automation scripts and benefit from them.

It’s also important to empower employees to become automation champions when they need assistance with automation in their jobs or help deploying the automations they’ve created. Having a consulting team to provide ongoing assurance and guidance to employees in less familiar areas of innovation can prevent employees from falling back into old ways of working.

Today, as automation accelerates in the workplace, business leaders need to keep pace with the way they manage human-machine collaboration. We will have to prioritize training employees on how to effectively use automation and help them adapt to new roles. Careful planning and ongoing oversight are also needed to prepare for a smooth transition to a future of human-machine collaboration.

*Note: The author of this article is Mr. Zou Zuoji, the new regional vice president of UiPath Greater China, who is mainly responsible for driving business strategy and growth in the region and leading the automation and digital transformation journey for customers and partners in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. He has extensive senior management experience in the technology industry and has a strong track record in improving the business and technical capabilities of the team, promoting customer digitalization and cloud transformation journeys, and developing new industry markets.