Fatigue occurs for many reasons – hectic home lives, excessive working hours, fluctuating shift patterns, and the demanding nature of many jobs – and it’s a widespread issue in many of the UK’s workplaces.
According to research from 2020 – a year when many workers had been absent from work due to nationwide lockdowns – fatigue is a prevalent problem:
- Over four-fifths of workers reported sleeping for less than the recommended seven hours before commencing work.
- 63 per cent of workers reported driving to work several times a month feeling drowsy.
- More than one-third were involved in an accident or near-miss while commuting because of fatigue.
Even if a health and safety breach is avoided, tired staff are unlikely to achieve optimum productivity and are more likely to make frequent mistakes.
Fatigue Management In The Workplace: An Impossible Problem?
If the statistics are to be believed, workplace fatigue is an endemic problem, but the answers are not always simple. Could digital workforce automation software be the solution to fatigue-induced productivity issues in your workplace?
A ‘digital workforce’ - comprising software programs, or bots, that are programmed to observe and carry out simple, repetitive tasks - can supplement and support the work of human workers in many ways, such as automating invoice processing, checking stock prices, and processing timesheets.
But how can ‘digital workers’ help to mitigate the problem of workplace fatigue?
- Unlike humans, digital workers never tire or get bored. The type of tasks they complete are repetitive and uninteresting to most people – exactly the sort of work that is likely to make a tired human employee feel even more fatigued!
- Digital workers are unlikely to make errors. Once programmed, they execute their work precisely, without deviation. In comparison, tired humans are more likely to make mistakes, no matter how good they ordinarily are at their jobs.
- Bots can complete tasks far more quickly than a human. A fatigued worker will be even less productive than normal, so implementing a digital workforce solution will significantly improve productivity.
- Keeping your team focused (and awake!) is more likely if their minds are engaged on creative and value-driven tasks. When digital workers take over routine and repetitive work, your staff can be directed to more interesting responsibilities that will engage their minds and help to keep tiredness at bay.
- Digital workers don’t sleep, so while your team are clocked off and getting some rest, bots continue to work overnight, allowing for even more progress on routine tasks to have been made by the time your employees come back in the morning.
- Unlike humans, digital workers don’t need holidays, weekends, or other days off, so robot workers can save a lot of potential backlogs by completing their tasks around the clock, so there is no dip in productivity.
Next Steps
At Cevitr, our Robotic Process Automation (RPA) experts can advise you on how to implement a digital workforce solution to reduce demand on your staff and improve the speed and accuracy of repetitive tasks. Please get in touch with us today to find out more.
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