By Greg Belkin, Senior Director, Product Marketing
If you’ve read our intro on workflow automation, you know what it is, why it’s valuable, and how to get started. But let’s dig a little deeper into what it means—not just for your business, but for your employees.
How Workflow Automation Creates Happier Workers
To start, most people like being freed from repetitive tasks, which is one of the things that workflow automation excels at. Plus, when they’re freed from those tasks, they can focus on work that’s more interesting and more fulfilling—not to mention more valuable for the business. This improves your businesses overall efficiency while also combating the kind of employee burnout that hurts staff retention and stymies growth.
And when we say “most people”, we’re talking about almost all. A 2021 report from Salesforce discovered that 89% of automation users say their day-to-day job satisfaction has increased with automation solutions, 91% believe automation solutions save time and offer better work/life balance, and 84% think automation has increased the value they bring to the company. Plus, 86% agree that workflow automation has driven business success across the entire company.
Beyond improving the day-to-day monotony for workers, workflow automation also improves communication and coordination across departments. For instance, if there’s an automatic alert that tells everyone when a potential customer has opened an email or visited a certain landing page, it’s easy for teams to strategize and plan for how best to engage that lead.
How Workflow Automation Improves Processes
This sort of visibility also emerges about the processes themselves. The very act of automating a workflow helps clarify what processes exist, what purposes they serve, and what resources are still needed beyond the workflows being automated. Then, you’re better able to identify inefficiencies or redundancies that can be eliminated altogether—which is even better than automating them. Everyone likes getting rid of needless work.
Automation can also be empowering. With software that doesn’t require employees to learn code, having an intuitive interface for creating automation helps employees take control of their own workflows. After all, who knows better which tasks need to be automated than the people responsible for them? When employees are equipped to create their own efficiencies, they get greater control over their work.
All of this is to say that even if people in your organization have their qualms about automation, they actually stand to benefit from it. It’s a great tool for freeing them from tedious manual tasks and letting them focus on the work that matters the most. Not everyone wants to have a guitar solo, but it’s always nice to feel like you’re a meaningful part of the band.
How Workflow Automation Serves Customers
On the flip side, automation can also serve customers. In SmartKarrot’s Global Customer Success Survey, 84% of executives said automation is important for customer service operations. If automation can help expedite repetitive tasks for employees, then it also accelerates customer experiences. And in today’s society, customers expect service at lightning speed.
Workflow Automation and Your Employees
Automation might be a frightening concept for employees worried about job security, as it can be seen as simply using machines to take care of pragmatic business needs. But it’s also a way to give employees a better work experience, helping free them from monotony and empowering them to do work that’s more fulfilling, more valuable, and simply more human.
So what sort of workflow automation could you benefit from? Is workflow automation just a basic way to gain efficiency? Or can it be more? Read the third and final part of our blog series to
