Lock the Office Door! The Bots are Coming!

Understanding What Drives Fear of Automation and

How to Help Employees Overcome It

Over the past several years, automation has been implemented in multiple industries, ranging from product manufacturing to automotive, healthcare, medical, and service-based businesses, to name a few.

While it’s not a new concept, there are still many unknowns for those businesses that have not yet ventured into the world of automation. Those unknowns, if not adequately addressed, can lead to mistrust, fear, resistance, and stress for employees facing the introduction of automation into their daily work routines.

If approached correctly, all the perceived negatives of automation can be overcome, and employees can focus on the true positives of automation and elevate their positions to focus on higher value-adding and professionally rewarding tasks.

In this article, we will explore why employees fear automation and how business leaders can navigate those rocky waters to ensure the successful adoption of automation within their organizations.

Understanding What Creates and Feeds the Fear of Automation in Employees

It is very common as humans for us to fear what we don’t know or understand. Think back to your little one’s first day of kindergarten and how they clung to your leg in fear as you dropped them off in their new environment that would soon become their daily routine (don’t worry….we won’t talk about the part of how you cried all the way back to the car 😉).

Their lack of understanding and knowledge about kindergarten and how it would impact them created that fear and resistance. Thankfully, they all survived and even thrived in kindergarten. For some reason, the glue tasted so much better back then.

The same applies to employees if they are not properly introduced to and educated on the benefits of automation and how those benefits will improve their daily work routines.

To be successful in this effort, business leaders need to understand the triggers that may lead to misconceptions and fear of automation and how to proactively address those concerns with the employees before automating tasks.

Use Case

Challenge:

Unfortunately, there is a common belief that bots (automation) will come in and take over everyone’s job. In some cases, such as manufacturing, that may be partially true.

But, if you think back to 1913, when Henry Ford introduced the first moving assembly line for mass production of automobiles, his innovation reduced the 12+ hour process of building an automobile to less than two hours. His forward thinking and introduction of doing something a new way empowered his employees to be much more productive in their daily work.

The same applies today but focuses more on reducing mundane routine tasks with lower value to the business so employees can focus on higher value-adding tasks and processes.

And yes, change must happen to get us from point A to point B. How business leaders handle that change determines the success of the transition.

Solution:

Before mentioning the word automation in the workplace, schedule a work session for impacted employees and request them to list routine, highly manual tasks that they find boring or unfulfilling work.

Next, ask them to prepare a list of all the value-adding tasks they would like to be doing if they had more time within their workday to take on new challenges and responsibilities. For some, that may even include educational opportunities that will enable them with new skills and knowledge that will help them advance within the company.

Then, review the lists of undesirable manual tasks and highlight at least one task or process for each team that can be automated, ultimately freeing up time for that team or employee.

Finally, bring the teams together for a follow-up meeting and share the information collected in the steps above. Highlight the opportunities that can be automated and tally up the hours of free time generated from this automation.

Be sure to feature any pain points called out in the work session that will be eliminated with the automation effort.

Win-Win for Businesses and Employees

Adopting this use case approach above may yield multiple advantages to the business and the employees:

• The impacted employees are shown how automation will impact their daily work, addressing the fear of the unknown.

• They may become excited about the change enabled by automation as that will allow them to focus on their goals and higher-level tasks noted in their lists from the earlier workshop session.

• The employees have assurance and a certain comfort level of knowing their jobs are not jeopardized. Removing this anxiety or fear goes a long way in building trust with the employee and gaining their support in the automation effort.

• Engaging employees early in the automation conversation and allowing them to share ideas and input into which processes get automated creates a sense of ownership and acceptance of the automation goals.

As you noticed in the use case above, automation was introduced to relieve pain points and tedious undesirable work tasks, not replace someone’s end-to-end daily processes.

This approach allows the business to gain the employee’s trust by using automation to add value to their daily work routine vs. introducing a threat that may jeopardize their source of income.

It is a reality that some automation use cases may target a rework of highly manual repetitive tasks, and rightfully so. The key is first to paint a picture of the possibilities for those impacted employees and invite them into the conversation that defines their new, more challenging, and more professionally rewarding roles.

Investing in employee upskilling to achieve these new roles may be needed and should be provided as it will add value to the employee and the company in the long run.

In Summary

Having a well-thought-out Change Management plan for introducing and incorporating automation into a business’ daily tasks will encourage employees to accept and support the new way of working.

The investment upfront in the implementation cost, employee training, and change management activities will be recouped once the automation savings are realized.

While introducing automation to the business may seem daunting, it’s a must now as automation will continue to gain momentum and drive value and potential savings for businesses as they grow.