How is the Philippines Adjusting with Changing Service Opportunities?

One of the Philippines’ key attractions has been its low-cost resources and a culturally aligned work ethic, which meshes so well with North America in particular. In light of new technology innovations, however, that are replacing human labour with software, or robotic labour, the Filippino market is experiencing the early rumblings of what promises to be an earthquake to shake traditional operating models to their core. 

Many local Shared Services centres have been quick to test robotic process automation as a means of driving performance and output, with encouraging results as they scale these opportunities to provide more valuable services.

The next chapter in digital transformation links what we have already learned about social, mobile, analytics, cloud and customer experience, leveraging this exponentially through intelligent automation. This translates into robotics software that replaces or augments human workers.

So, how is this “digital” workforce settling in?

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Balancing the human and robotic workforce

The Intelligent Process Automation “revolution” is having a major impact on the human workforce, so no organization should travel too far down this path without devising a strategy that encompasses both the digital (sometimes called synthetic), as well as human, element. From a shared services perspective, what this means is that an intelligent automation strategy should align with a longer-term staffing strategy for business services.

How, for example, should you retrain employees to perform new value-added tasks – i.e., how do you help an AP Clerk become a spend analyst? Should your next hire in Finance be an accountant or an RPA Developer?

Current headlines frequently reference the "hollowing out" of jobs, and the replacement of significant segments of the global workforce by machines. While there are many concerns around the "risk" to traditional organizational structures as a result of intelligent automation – specifically robotics and artificial intelligence – a more accurate description is a new organizational model that combines digital technology and workflows with the unique attributes that humans bring to the table. The truth is that the goal is not automation per se, but the optimization of tasks by blending human and machine capabilities. In the vast majority of Intelligent Process Automation implementations, the goal is not to displace people, but rather redeploy those resources to higher value work. While this is not always possible, and some displacement is occurring, enterprises are reserving much of the productivity to invest in business value accretive work.

As enterprises adopt intelligent automation across their operations, it is important that they clearly define and plan how the human element will differentiate services. Some leading multinationals are already taking the initiative to set up "human" strategies that focus on enabling productivity, understanding and preparing for the skill requirements of the future, emphasizing the more fulfilling nature of work, and inspiring employees to stretch for better business results. The question that needs to be addressed, therefore, is: in a digital world, how can being more human become the key to unlocking greater growth?

The advent of robotic process automation and artificial intelligence is just one of the trends impacting today’s workforce. Others include:

• shift in demographics, as Millennials join a generation of employees that is retiring later, with the latter often feeling pushed aside, while the former struggle to gain acceptance and respect from older colleagues.
• work is becoming less permanent and increasingly flexible, with some estimates of one in five US workers having a "contingent" (not permanent) role by 2020. That's not necessarily a bad thing but it marks a significant change from the traditional model.
• new business models leveraging the "sharing economy" are rapidly outgrowing traditional business models.
• social instability, political instability, Brexit, suspicion of immigration, a new approach to foreign trade, etc.
• humans may be best placed to address the expanded risk profile that can result from automated systems.

To counter this, organizations will need a robust plan. The onus is on today's leaders, therefore, to plan for the digitized workplace, leverage automation to benefit humans as a whole, and position human value add centre stage, by:

• ensuring organizations reflect a more connected world – business silos propped up by traditional hierarchies are outdated; digital connectivity and collaboration on a global scale have changed the game completely.
• taking a broader approach to the human ecosystem beyond the own workforce – with more workers becoming "contingent" this begs the question, what will organizations actually offer employees, beyond a basic contract? Being valued and respected, having opportunities to learn and grow, and feeling that work is purposeful and significant remain key. Organizations will have to figure out how to provide this support in the face of virtual teams, the gig economy, and automated enterprises.
• being aware of the downside of the "always on" culture. Already, illness based on digital dementia and digital stress as a result of 24/7 availability are emerging. Organizations need to protect their employees and help them survive in the always connected world.
• supporting humans in developing new skills in a world defined and driven by the Internet of Things, robotics, and artificial intelligence. The B Team’s Ariella Huffington predicts that the two most essential skills in the new world order will be "creativity" and "empathy".

To support and develop humans in the workforce, organizations should explore new ways of working that inspire individuals, embed continual learning and education strategies into career plans, and actively strive for a balance between technology and the people who humanize the work experience.  

In the near term, there is already a talent gap and a need to grow and develop these new skills to help ensure a smoother transition to the workforce of the future.

Are you ready for change?

The truth is nobody likes change, so you need strong management backup. And that means, first and foremost, an Automation Evangelist – a leader who will push through the idea, with the influence to make it happen. Never has the Chinese definition of crisis as an opportunity rung truer. If anyone is looking for a reason to take on large-scale digitization driven by intelligent automation, it is today’s disruptive economic environment. The question is really one of how aggressive you want to be – and whether you have the stomach to reengineer processes to fit the solutions or prefer to patch up the gaps.

Consider, for example, the fact that no company would today design a car that could not be built by robots. By contrast, most internal processes are designed to be managed by hand. Brave companies looking towards the future will take a red pencil to their current process charts and redesign them to be managed by bots. That, of course, is only half of the problem. The other challenge is to re-educate humans to work with these redesigned processes. Finally, consider that there are literally thousands of start-ups around the world that are starting with a clean sheet of paper and building an entirely new delivery model around almost everything: for example, Airbnb, which became the largest purveyor of lodging in just five years via an app on your phone.

There is also the issue of "automation anxiety" that is plaguing enterprises. The key factor here is that IA implementation needs to be closely controlled through a robust change management framework, and that any concerns around security or job losses should be addressed early. This is not only a question of organizational readiness, but perhaps predominantly one of a mindset change. Organizations like ANZ Bank have cleverly presented bots as "virtual assistants" to their workforce. Emphasizing technologies’ ability to safely and reliably remove mundane work, in order to free up individuals for more "interesting" and value adding work is key.

Tips on introducing your digital workforce

As with any change management, preparedness and planning are key. Here are some suggestions:

1. How will you present the robotic element to an existing team? Some organizations have had success by personalizing the robots – giving them names, for example. Others introduce them as ‘digital assistants’, to help out.
2. Don’t assume you have to automate the “as is” process. Take a critical review and consider how robotic automation may consume data differently to humans. Many manual steps can be eliminated completely and don't even require automation.
3. Start small and grow your capabilities over time.
4. Look at automation for things other than cost, such as CX, quality, consistency, speed. These objectives make sense to human workers, and any help in achieving them is readily acknowledged.
5. Consider establishing a pilot program that draws on the strength of an experienced partner. Professional services firms are acquiring experience with technology providers, and the specialized skill set needed to make RPA processes work in tax, accounting, administration and other specialized workflows.
6. Involve your team. Employees hear about the threat of robotics replacing white-collar workers, but the real-world experience has been that robotics allow workers to focus on more valuable tasks and help employers build higher-functioning teams.
7. Make RPA a business-led initiative, not an IT-led initiative. Bots can be configured within the teams, close to the business processes and expertise required to make them work. This highlights the “augmented” aspect of robotics over the “replacement.”