Did you know that without task automation at work, an average employee spends about 3 hours a day repeating the same mundane task instead of focusing on more creative projects? This has resulted in decreased work productivity and effectiveness for many companies.
Reports show that companies who adopted work automation had nearly 60% of their employees saving six or more hours a week when some repetitive aspects of their jobs were automated. This is made possible because automation can handle about 45% of repetitive tasks. Still skeptical? Here are 11 benefits of automation that can give your business the boost it needs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is work automation in IT?
We can view work automation as an IT multiplier tool that improves the effectiveness of an IT team without increasing the number of team members. Task automation uses IT software to help employees streamline workflows by reducing the repetition of essential tasks. Through this, workers are more productive and effective in their day-to-day work performance.
Automation can help IT infrastructures scale and keep pace with growth and demand. Companies also use automation to alleviate burnout and fatigue from repetitive tasks. In return, energy is less spent on impracticality and is redirected towards addressing key objectives to help businesses grow.
How to help businesses and employees see the benefit of work automation in IT?
Companies and employees should understand the core concept behind automation. Task automation is here to stay, and they aren’t taking anyone’s job slot. Businesses and employees need to know the collaborative opportunities of working alongside automation processes. This requires thorough training since automation in the workplace is not a self-directed concept.
The goal of training should be to equip employees with the skills to fill gaps that automated processes can’t address. The future of work isn’t one where robots replace people, rather it’s one that allows people to concentrate on more knowledge-based tasks to use their skills more strategically.
What are some workflow tasks that we can automate?
There are a plethora of tasks that can easily transition to automation. HR requests, employee hiring, onboarding, recruiting, and payroll schedules can be automated to assist the HR and recruiting team. The communications team can also take advantage of automate report creation, appointment scheduling, email responses, signatures, and sorting tasks.
The IT teams can automate data backups, network management, PC maintenance, uninstall apps/programs, the conversion of files in bulk, account creation, file transfers, data extraction. Development teams can also automate software/hardware/technology requests, scripts to copy files and perform repetitive actions, and optimize images. Even legal, network, and security teams can automate data mining.
11 Benefits of Task Automation at Work
Automation is everywhere, from scheduling our emails, sending a check through the mail after receiving an invoice, or creating, organizing, and moving tasks through the workflow. With task automation we get to do our jobs faster and better. Here are some of the benefits of automation in the workplace.
Decreases manual errors from manual entries or oversights.
IT employees have a lot of applications, networks, cloud, and services to monitor, and most times, it’s tough to ensure that adequate and consistent monitoring takes place across the entire IT ecosystem. Hence, it’s easy for individuals to overlook minor errors that may cause a significant issue and require more time, money, and effort to support and rectify.
Task automation ensures consistency and improves transparency by relying on a specific configuration. It can help you reduce errors during processes like data entry, and it helps ensure that work and critical steps are not missed. Even if mistakes occur, you can review your specific task management board and workflow to pinpoint the exact location where mistakes happened before they cascade into bigger ones.
It optimizes times to improve productivity.
After reducing errors and filling up open roles, work automation helps reduce quality time spent on repetitive tasks, tedious admins, and fixing issues in your process cycle. Some task automation tools can help with almost every step of the IT process while giving employees time to prepare and focus on more critical projects.
It promotes control and efficiency.
Deploying automation in your workplace gives you a sense of control as you can set up processes and roles to audit and refine your duties. You can also track team members’ progress and workflows to identify completed and uncompleted tasks. Work automation also helps you identify broken or unnecessary gaps and mistakes in the system’s workflows.
Fast responses.
Another benefit of task automation is rapid response which ensures customer satisfaction by collecting incoming data from emails, web forms, social media requests, and server information. Task automation also uses workflow management to alert you for issues like service complaints or breakdowns to guarantee that the customers’ requests are also handled efficiently instead of waiting for someone to be on site.
Improves communication and team collaboration.
With many companies going hybrid, task automation helps further strengthen collaboration and foster clearer workflow communication channels between IT Members and their clients. It also helps to prioritize the team’s most essential follow-up conversations and interactions to focus their efforts where it counts. Instead of guessing what task comes next, task automation notifies team members on what to do. Automation at work also gives solutions to inconsistent follow-up and oversight challenges, especially when tasks are left uncompleted in due time.
Optimize employee skills.
Employees perform better when they are engaged in lessons, apply critical thinking and multiple skill sets that task automations aren’t capable of handling. It allows human teams to focus on high-skill, more challenging, meaningful, and creative tasks that further business growth.
Helps with employee job performance and satisfaction.
A recent Salesforce survey found 89% of full-time workers are more satisfied with their job due to automation. The truth is that repetitive tasks eat up many functions, slow down communication, cause stress, burnout and decrease creativity. With task automation, employees are relieved of the extra workload and become more productive, while communicating better with teams and clients. It also helps them be open to more work opportunities within the workplace.
Helps employees with work-life balance.
Tasks automation gives employees the benefits of working at their pace from anywhere and at any time. Research shows that 91% of workers say automation offers better work-life balance which gives them ample time to take breaks, rest, spend quality time outside of work, and focus on more valuable tasks. Employees who are offered flexibility generally leads to a productive work culture and decreased turnover rates.
Improves customer satisfaction.
Customers are often satisfied when work is faster, and deliverables get delivered within the time frame without errors. When customers don’t get the service they expect, their loyalty shifts. The degree of satisfaction from their experience is the most critical factor in competitive differentiation. With task automation, the customer’s journey is made more accessible and more personalized. For example, CRM task automation helps map out a client’s entire business process to make their journey more manageable and efficient.
Reduced operational cost.
There are two aspects to operational cost— direct labor cost and indirect labor cost. With task automation, organizations can help to save both. Jobs that take three or more workers can be replaced by automation. The money intended for salary can now be allocated for investments and upkeep of automation tools, which is generally cheaper. Additionally, using task automation software cuts indirect costs due to loss of time and human error. Unlike humans, this software is faster and doesn’t cause burnout, so you can get more done with fewer resources.
Helps increase ROI.
Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in employee productivity and attracts at least 60-70% of leads and increased conversions. Automating mundane tasks also reduces wasted time and manual labor while encouraging employees to move onto more important tasks requiring their skills to handle more business. Once you begin to improve your entire process, your team becomes more productive, manual error and unnecessary costs are reduced, conversion and leads are increased, and employees are utilizing their talent appropriately. Simultaneously, customers are satisfied and a boost on your return on investment will improve your profit.
Wrap up
Both companies and employees can enjoy the benefits that come with automation. From increased productivity and efficiency to reduced manual errors, employees get to do the critical task at the right time without risking burnout or quality compromise.
Want to learn more about the magic of work automation? Head over to our candidate services page to learn more!
