By Aytekin Tank
With layoffs looming because of the current economic climate, many employees are concerned with losing their jobs—and they have a right to worry. There have been significant layoffs, especially in the tech industry.
According to The Economic Times, these dismissals are giving workers sleepless nights. The macroeconomic uncertainty isn’t just unnerving—it’s led to “a huge rise in stress levels and anxiety-related disorders in the last six to eight months.”
Many workers are afraid they’ll be replaced by automation. However, I believe that automation isn’t the enemy—it’s the antidote. Why? Because it allows you to maximize your greatest resource: time.
“You may be thinking that it’s finally happened: The robots have won,” writes Nahia Orduña in her fascinating story for Harvard Business Review. However, rather than panic, she recommends reflecting instead on all the ways technology is here to benefit us and the ways in which we’re indispensable.
I’ve been in the form-building space for over 16 years and have witnessed Orduña’s point that humans are indispensable firsthand. People across my organization are essential puzzle pieces to our company’s success. I rely on team-members’ technical skillset as well as their vision for continually raising the bar—something no robot can ever replace.
This past summer, my company, Jotform, opened its sixth office worldwide in Istanbul, Turkey. We’ve grown from a small group of dedicated individuals back in 2006, to a thriving team of hundreds today. The glue holding us all together has been automation.
So, here are a few tips for adopting automation in a way that will help your team succeed and help ease the concerns of your teammates.
1. Eliminate hassle
The one key advantage for setting up an automation plan is that it allows you to streamline your business and avoid some of the major day-to-day hiccups which have the potential to give everyone headaches.
One of our products, Jotform Tables, for example, allows you to replace tedious spreadsheets and gather data through custom online forms—without any coding needed. This means that anyone on your team can do this without the hassle that often accompanies data collection.
2. Make collaboration seamless
One of my favorite uses of automation is that it can help teams stay on track effortlessly.
“One of the most important things to ensure an effective remote team collaboration is establishing a good communication system,” writes Georgi Todorov for Coworker Mag. “Every member of the team should have access to all the relevant information and be able to communicate what’s going on in the company easily.”
For greater transparency, using automation tools like Asana or Tables, which can facilitate quick collaboration with teammates and colleagues and can ensure that everyone’s on the same page.
3. Achieve more by doing less
Time is our greatest asset. When I first started out, I spent an inordinate amount of hours on cumbersome tasks that prevented me from accomplishing worthier goals. But as author and futurist, Jacob Morgan points out: “Successful leaders must not only drive business growth but also add value.”
Busywork and management processes can be automated so that your mind is freed up to think about bigger things. Which is to say, automation doesn’t just help your business’ workflow, it also helps you better organize.
We all know repetitive tasks are a time suck. When you can offload these, you’ll discover untapped energy to work on higher value activities.
“Value-focused leaders add value to their organization and everyone who interacts with it,” Morgan adds. “By staying in tune with people and focusing on creating value instead of just creating revenue, leaders can find great success.”
4. Give workers greater autonomy
One of the end goals with automating tasks is to make it easier for everyone to do things on their own, without requiring help from others.
For instance, one of my employees, Kat, who works in marketing, doesn’t need one of our coders to help her when inputting data. She doesn’t have to interrupt her workflow or reach out for something simple. This is what autonomy looks like.
Whether you work with a small or large team, streamlining your business can have beneficial results across the board. You’re not just saving people time and energy, you’re also improving overall efficiency.
More important, when properly used, you can turn a hesitant workforce around. As Orduña puts it: “Robots may have a smaller margin of technical error, but they lack your humanity, your quirks, and the rare and distinctive qualities that make you who you are.”
I understand the fear that automation could displace jobs but, ultimately, I believe that automation is a tool meant to help us all remain more connected, productive, and in sync.
Aytekin Tank is the founder and CEO of Jotform.
There may be advantages to automation.
With layoffs looming because of the current economic climate, many employees are concerned with losing their jobs—and they have a right to worry. There have been significant layoffs, especially in the tech industry.
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