Automation – The Joy of Work!

The famous quote from Mark Twain

“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life”

It is ideal situation but for most businesses there is work to be done and people undertake the tasks as a compromise to achieve other factors such as their work life balance.

Automation can change the tasks that need to be performed. The result can be more Joy for the individuals impacted by the change.

Automation can be more than a great business case with an attractive ROI, it can transform the approach to work, and the activities people are required to undertake.

1. TLDR
2. Business Processes are fundamental for Automation!
3. Does anybody enjoy Repetition?
4. How important is Repetition?
5. Does office work require Artisan Craft skills?
6. Does a complex Automation generate more Joy?
7. Building the Automation gives Joy!

1. TL;DR

Business Processes deliver consistency. Consistency can be Automated.

Repetition can become tedious. Remove the repetition to give Relief and provide Joy.

The more Repetition replaced with Automation, the more Joy for the workers freed from the tasks.

The L’Oréal tagline

“Because you are worth it”

applies to staff who could benefit from Automation of the repetitive tasks they perform. A good ROI is available as well.

2. Business Processes are fundamental for Automation!

A business process is the way something gets done.

Every business needs to have processes to deliver consistent outcomes for its customers.

Using a standard, predictable business process enables the activity to be undertaken by more than one person. It is the way a business can scale so that teams of people can work together effectively.

It is the consistency and repetition that provides the potential for automation.

Any process can encounter errors and that is where knowledgeable people are often the best way to handle the situation.

3. Does anybody enjoy Repetition?

Yes, many people enjoy repetition because it provides a sense of stability, security, and comfort.

Repetitive tasks and experiences, such as listening to the same music or reading the same story, can also stimulate dopamine release in the brain, improving mood, and can be particularly helpful in developing skills.

Many Professions and Trades have used “Apprentices” to perform “Grunt” work consisting of repetitive low value tasks. It has been on the basis that doing lots of the same tasks built a skill that was necessary to enable higher value tasks to be completed.

“We learn through repetition,” says Catherine Loveday, Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Westminster. “That’s how we fix anything in our minds.”

If automation can remove the need for people to perform such low value tasks, how are they going to learn the skills?

Do people really need to perform low value tasks hundreds of times during several years of an apprenticeship, or can they learn the skill with just 10 iterations?

4. How important is Repetition?

Consistency is important but when a variation is encountered, what happens?

Experienced staff when presented with a variation will follow the WDWDLT approach. The “What Did We Do Last Time”, provides a way of consistently dealing with that type of variation. It enables something non-standard to be processed.

In the world of AI, Machine Learning (ML) is often presented as a mechanism to deal with variations in processes.

The concept of Reinforcement Learning (RL) is where an AI process is provided with a “Feedback” loop in order that it can learn from the outcome of the processing.

Part of the strength of AI solutions is they have models that have been trained on large amounts of data as input with algorithms refined to deliver acceptable outputs. It is certainly true that ML can be used to adjust the output, but any idea that it is a quick process where just one or two examples of the variation will result in the AI adjusting to the different scenario is False.

ML takes a lot of examples to learn of a variation, far more than you would expect from a person who can quickly identify scenarios and adopt the WDWDLT approach.

5. Does office work require Artisan Craft skills?

Manufacturing is based to producing the same outcome consistently and at scale.

Many activities in office work have similar requirements of consistent outcome.

Of course, people need to be treated as individuals. Some customer interactions with office staff benefit greatly from personal skills and these require time.

Such personal interactions are better when workers are not distracted by simultaneously working with complex IT systems. When automation can reduce the effort from an office worker, more time is freed for those personal interactions.

Although knowledge and skill are used to perform office work, the outcome does not usually show any artisan craft. There is no wood, pottery, metal or cake as the outcome, it is usually a digital result which then drives operational processes.

6. Does a complex Automation generate more Joy?

As the implementation of automation provides joy to the staff released from the performance of manual activity, does the amount of joy vary by task?

The biggest factor determining the amount of joy is the number of times a task had to be performed each day. The joy is probably greater if a task performed 50 times a day is automated rather a task which is repeated 10 times.

Automating a complex task may generate more relief than joy, if the complexity of the task required a lot of concentration to avoid errors.

Relief is defined as temporary; it arises from the avoidance of an unpleasant or stressful activity. This can occur when automation is first deployed.

Whereas Joy is associated with a deeper state of well-being. Staff knowing that they do not have repetitive boring tasks to perform can deliver joy for many weeks.

Memories of the tedious work will fade over time, and the automation will be treated as an “Expected” way of working.

7. Building the Automation gives Joy!

The activity to build an automation and deploy it into a business can provide Joy and satisfaction.

BMW have used an advert:

“The Joy of Driving”

It leverages the feelings of freedom and control.

There are parallels in the creation of an Automation. The feeling of achievement and mastery of the technology to deliver benefits to the business as well as the staff.