With a cost-of-living crisis spurred on by the war in Ukraine following the Covid pandemic, itself following a protracted Brexit negotiation process with the EU, the UK and Europe have faced years of financial uncertainty.
Recently, the Bank of England predicted a potential recession within a year, meaning that many businesses will already be thinking of ways they might reduce costs in different areas.
Naturally, the labour market is one of these areas. But the best answer isn't always the obvious one. If you're thinking of letting staff go to make ends meet, it's worth considering some of the other options available first.
One of these options is investing in an RPA (i.e. Robotic Process Automation) system. Often the fear for employees is that automated technology would spell the end of a human labour workforce, with people replaced by machines, but in fact, RPA instead unlocks the potential of your workforce by taking care of the menial administrative tasks that may otherwise distract from their more important work.
Think of highly repetitive tasks that no employee truly enjoys doing and which only serve to harm productivity or increase burnout (two key challenges in the modern workplace). Filling in forms, generic data entry, and other work that doesn't require a particular skill, yet could be completed by an automated system that knows how in a fraction of the time. That's the core benefit of RPA.
RPA can accomplish smaller tasks, across different platforms, with more efficiency, while the core value-driven work of your company is left for human employees to focus on. Ultimately this helps cut labour costs by giving workers more productive time for tasks they find stimulating and that create value, rather than administrative work that can be better handled by an RPA system.
In time, this increased productivity will reflect growth for the company, with multiple departments working more efficiently together. Long-term profits from this will likely outweigh the short-term answer of laying off skilled employees to reduce staff costs, which will be the temptation facing some businesses in the current climate.
If investing in RPA sounds like it may be the right fit for you, or you simply want more information, get in touch with Cevitr to request a demo of our RPA solutions first-hand. Our business process automation software, nicknamed 'Jo', stands ready to join your team as a new remote worker who doesn't mind taking the jobs no one else wants.
Image Source: Canva