British workers demand more automation

A new report suggests that fear of automation among British workers is not as prevalent as people assume. Findings indicate that in many cases, employees would actually welcome greater automation in the workplace – with nearly half claiming they could get between 25 and 50 per cent more work done if technology took on repetitive tasks for them.

The Digital Work Report 2018 was commissioned by the work management platform company, Wrike, and surveyed just over 3,000 workers from across the UK, France and Germany. The findings highlight a number of perceived benefits around automation but that calls for greater adoption by employees are falling on deaf ears, raising concerns for business leaders and their HR teams. Of those who took part, 52% have admitted looking for a new job because of frustrations over what they see as outdated ways of thinking around work practices at their current company.

Nearly half of those surveyed (45%) in the UK believe automation would give their company a competitive advantage. However, while 39 per cent are considering automation tools for some of their job functions, just 4 per cent of UK companies have an automation strategy (i.e. planning to implement tools/techniques within next 12-24 months) for the whole company – considerably lower than European counterparts in Germany and France (both at 8 per cent).

Prof. Steven Van Belleghem, an expert in customer focus in the digital world and author of Customers The Day After Tomorrow says: “The reality is that automation is happening, and that means people and machines are going to have to work closely together. Simply saying “I’m not really interested in digital” in today’s job market is the equivalent of saying “I’m not really interested in learning to read and write” fifty years ago.”