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With nearly 30% of tasks in 60% of all industries likely to be automated, according to a McKinsey report, business leaders need to help employees transition to an automated workforce. Companies that are ready for automation are those that repeat the same steps in multiple areas and those that start dropping the ball on basic tasks, such as missing deadlines or recurring inspection timelines. Leaders need to examine each employee’s workday to find opportunities for automation. Once found, they need to over communicate how those tasks will be automated. Through communication, companies can achieve buy-in from employees who will find they have less paperwork to handle and fewer people to track down to check a form. Ask staffers to document everything they hate doing, and those tasks often are the ones that can be automated. Highlight all the benefits of how the company and workers’ day-to-day lives will improve with automation. Address all concerns from workers and offer free training. Let your employees know that they can learn a new skill and grow with the organization. For example, a paper-focused firm could adopt best practices in field service software and eliminate all paper work orders, which would eliminate the need for office data entry personnel. Data entry workers could be retrained to conduct quality audit reviews on the data. Companies should designate at least one business analyst as an automation leader to clearly document each problem and recommend several possible solutions. More than one set of eyes, however, should be on the solution chosen by the organization to confirm that the automation tools are customizable without the company being charged for every change that needs to be made to suit company needs.

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