Canadian HR Reporter

www.hrreporter.com 13 being deployed that might automate a part or a range of tasks that someone might be performing," he says. For repetitive tasks, AI and auto- mation is a great tool, says Vu, because robots are good at doing only one task at a time. But written tasks such as short emails are a prime candidate for automation. "Let's say you just had a phone meeting or a Zoom call with someone and you just want to send them a quick note thanking them for their time and wishing them good day. Gmail has introduced this [tool] where the moment you type in your wording, it will suggest to you what the next word should be based on a lot of what other people have typed." But automated tools cannot replace an employee for more specialized tasks that require a human's touch and expertise, he says. "The email completion tool doesn't help when you're trying to communicate a complex or specialized idea. But in those repetitive cases where you're just sending a quick thank you note to someone, those would be examples of the type of task in which automation technology now is very, very good at automating." at out-of-date work flows [and] at whether it was necessary." Great tool for repetitive tasks While change in the workforce is inevitable as technology continues to be adopted, any mass loss of jobs will not happen, according to an economist and workplace automation expert. "In the Spanish case, it's interesting because that person was fired specifically because of the introduction of new technology. But, oftentimes, you don't necessarily see an entire job being destroyed because of [the] introduction of a new technology," says Viet Vu, an economist at the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship in Toronto. The last "wave of automation — [where] we actually saw a big job destruction impact — was in manufacturing in the '90s, where the introduction of assembling machines, automatons [meant] you don't actually need people assembling different parts; the machine can pick up different parts and put that together. That was really the last wave of automation in which complete jobs are destroyed," says Vu. "Whereas, oftentimes in these instances, there's automation technology that is Lessons for HR, employers So how can HR achieve a successful transformation? Use its reach to leverage greater messaging when a workplace is being automated, says Stam. "[It's about] communicating the fact that it's happening and, frankly, [that] you're going to introduce some technology that starts to maybe encroach in privacy law areas. And you really want to be communicating and giving notice that it's going to be rolled out — things like video surveillance, but even things like the biometric scanning to see if you have COVID or if there's some old-school employers out there that are doing things like keystroke monitoring of remote workers — give notice of all of it because, otherwise, you can't even rely on it as evidence if that's the reason you're using it in the first place." And don't simply impose new auto- mating processes on workers — talk to them while it is happening, says Vu. "One of the more important roles that HR should be playing is really understanding where the employee pain points are because — and this is most likely true if the company essentially ends up automating parts of the jobs the employees find to be frustrating or difficult themselves — they're probably going to be quite happy with that decision. But only if the employees have been engaged from the very beginning about actually understanding and then expressing that view, because employees know their work best because they're the ones that themselves do the work," he says. "HR can play a leading role in facilitating a conversation between employees and employers and creating spaces where employees can express and explain it and teach the entirety of the job and specifically identify places where automation might actually benefit from best." CHRR "You don't necessarily see an entire job being destroyed because of the introduction of a new technology." Viet Vu, Brookfield Institute

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