Improving Employee Satisfaction: An Automatic Win
By: Lisa Hower, Director, Business Enterprise Solutions Team
Keeping an eye on technology forecasts is part and parcel of being a successful innovator. Looking ahead allows us to be ready to adopt the newest meaningful tech solutions that appear on our radar. At Discover, where innovation is part of our identity, we consistently look toward the horizon for that next big thing that could help improve our business. So, when we got wind of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), we jumped at the chance to streamline our procedures where it made sense. Today, RPA continues to enhance Discover’s business. Most recently, we automated a tedious internal process, yielding happier employees — and, for us, that’s the best return.
Discover’s adoption of RPA has already helped improve our day-to-day processes as well as customer satisfaction. Recently, our Card Operations RPA team lent a hand to the Workforce Management (WFM) team to automate their Paid Time Off (PTO) waitlist system. Every October, our WFM liaisons work long hours fielding PTO requests for the upcoming year from more than 8,000 agents. Each request in the annual PTO bid queue takes no fewer than eight manual clicks to complete. A menial, repetitive task like this one is the ideal use case for RPA. We handed the job over to automation and, over a single weekend in October 2020, the new RPA bot tackled 23,000 requests, eliminating 184,000 clicks and weeks of monotonous work for our liaisons. The result has been greater employee fulfillment — an immeasurable benefit. While it may be difficult to measure our agents’ happiness, the metrics behind it are undeniable.
To no surprise, the liaisons are thrilled to have that time back. Many hadn’t ever been able to take days off in October. And it’s not just time that has been returned to them. The new process has given employees more time to log off and unwind. Some liaisons even used the hours they got back to improve their skills and ultimately become greater assets to Discover. “I was able to spend time developing myself professionally through our online training classes, understanding the Discover Behaviors and leveraging wellness resources,” said liaison Stephanie West. It is part of Discover’s DNA to always strive to improve employee satisfaction. Sometimes, the outcome turns out to be more than just happy workers.
Streamlining the PTO request process means WFM liaisons can dedicate more time to higher-value work. Now, during their peak busy season, liaisons can serve their internal customers better than ever before. With more time, the WFM group works on projects to improve their processes and explores new initiatives at no expense of their day-to-day work. Of its many contributions, RPA allows human workers to focus on more strategic initiatives, which benefits all parties involved, from employees to customers.
Keeping our eyes fixed on the horizon and our people as our priority, we will continue to use automation where it befits us. As Discover continues to evaluate which processes might be suited for automation, we will remain devoted to providing the best employee experience possible. If we’re using RPA to make the most of our employees’ time and skills, they will be happier — and, as a result, so will our customers.
