Ready for the robots? 5 ways automation will impact employee engagement.
Automation is changing our relationship to work. This is how organizations can keep up.
We’ve had 300 thousand years to get used to other humans. It’s been 263 years since the Industrial Revolution. That’s two and half centuries to adjust to having co-workers.
It’s no surprise it’s taking us a while to get used to our robo-colleagues. And they’re not going anywhere soon. By 2026 100 million humans will need to find a way to get along with the synthetic new hires.
Only 21% of employees are engaged. It’s not a great figure, but it’s the highest it’s been for 14 years. Automation could reverse our progress.
Wellbeing will drop.
Automation kills jobs. It also creates new jobs, but for different people. Employees who perform routine tasks will be the ones that lose out. Even if they haven’t lost yet, the threat is looming.
People in automation-ready jobs have higher levels of stress and job dissatisfaction. In some industries this means at least 40% of the workforce is unhappy. They are 4 percentage points more likely to be suffering from severe mental illness.
Leaders can offset the risk by creating long-term reskilling plans. Build employee confidence. Help them get ready to find a new role, even if that’s with a different company.
Meaning will be harder to find.
Employees want fulfilling jobs. 37% would take a pay cut in return for more meaningful work. They want to feel that their efforts are important for the job to be done well. A study across 20 European countries and 13 industries found robo-colleagues reduce meaning.
Employees felt they had lost autonomy. They didn’t have the power to decide how and when they completed tasks. They had to do what the system told them. Employees became “AI Janitors,” serving the demands of the machine.
This doesn’t have to the be case. Better designed jobs can position the employee as a skilled manager of the technology. They can be empowered to drive value for the organization through their use of the tool.
If you sense your employees are lacking meaning, be cautious. This is probably the wrong time to consider new workforce surveillance measures. Tools like email trackers drastically decrease feelings of autonomy.
Humans will miss connection.
Socializing with colleagues is nice, but it’s not enough. To have a sense of belonging, we must feel needed. Strong relationships are built when we can give our skills to other people. And when we hear that they appreciate them.
As more tasks are automated, we’ll interact with human colleagues less frequently. AI-technologies like chatbots can seem human. But they don’t fulfill our need for collaboration. People prefer to work with humans over AI.
Leaders must recognize the removal of this critical driver of engagement. They should take steps to replace it in other ways. There must be opportunities for employees to receive social recognition as valuable contributors. These will need to be consciously manufactured.
Company culture will be challenged.
Humans abuse robots, directing anger and violence at them. In some cases, they are racist or sexist based on the robot’s assumed demographics. As AI-tools become more convincingly human this is likely to increase. Whilst the robot doesn’t care, its likely to have a poisonous effect on DEI efforts.
Humans aren’t the only troublemakers in the team. Robo-colleagues can influence their co-workers to behave poorly. The BBC reports an unpublished study by the US Military. Unlike the human it replaced, a robot did not anticipate its colleagues’ needs or volunteer information. The human teammates noticed this behavior and disliked it. Overtime, the humans followed the robot’s lead. They became less collaborative both with robots and other humans.
Human-robot company culture is uncharted territory. It will become even more complex as AI-technologies evolve. Leaders must be explicit on behavioral expectations.
Employees will be more productive.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Strategically leveraging benefits can offset some of the automation challenges.
Collaboration with robo-colleagues can make employees feel competent. This is especially true for highly skilled professionals. Giving them access to complex analyses can amplify the impact of their abilities. Freeing their time of administrative tasks can increase their speed. Feeling like they are good at their role improves their job satisfaction.
Their perception is backed up by objective measures of performance. Using ChatGPI increases speed and quality of writing tasks. Robo-colleagues are also useful in delegating. They can send the right level of work to the right employee. Employees felt stretched but not overwhelmed.
For a deeper dive into the science: Robots, Meaning, and Self-Determination (Nikolova et al, 2022)
