It’s about time we finally address the double standard seen in modern workplaces. And while it’s not usually in our wheelhouse to wade into workers’ rights, we’ve had enough!

Ok, we’re being a little facetious… but honestly, people treat bots badly. Robots are your digital employees. There’s no two ways about it. They carry out work that you would otherwise have people doing. It’s about time we give them the credit they deserve and truly recognise their strengths and weaknesses.

Clear Favourite

Imagine for a moment that you have an employee who does, well, average work. And while they don’t set your world alight, they’re OK at what they do. Then, let’s say, you have an employee who processes at incredible speed, 24/7. But from time to time, they get it really wrong. Like completely wrong.

It’s a bit obvious, but we’re comparing an average employee with a bot. It is a double standard that, for the most part, you’ll get a lot more frustrated with a bot than a person? We think so. And that just isn’t right.

Many Hands

Truly understanding the limitations of both a person and a bot is the only way to work when evaluating what you’re going to get by choosing a digital employee over a human one. A human being is going to be capable of making decisions and dealing with things they haven’t seen before – but, a bot isn’t. However, a bot can work round the clock, at a speed 100x a team of people could only dream of.

Golden Ratio

The thing is, any time a bot makes a mistake it’s because a human didn’t build it properly. That’s right – we’re all to blame when we curse a failed program.

This is why aiming for a 100% success rate with a bot just isn’t realistic – so get that out of your head. We aim for 80/20 success to failure. Now, that might sound low – but think how much that bot can do, 80% of a large volume of work is still far more than a team of people could churn through. Edge cases are unavoidable and that’s ok: you’ve got people to deal with those.

Gravy Train

At some point, you’ve got to consider scale. Let’s take the example of a public transport company dealing with strikes that cause massive delays. A lot of frustration for commuters.

With such widespread issues, a huge volume of refund requests flood in. You. You have two choices: hire a bunch of people to process them, or build a bot that can deal with the traffic.

There’s only one right answer here – and that is ‘the one that can deal with all of these requests as quickly and efficiently as possible; in the most cost effective way.’

It’s moments like these that digital employees will truly shine. But, unless companies spend time onboarding bots – as they would with any other new starter – they won’t be able to deliver when it matters most.

Ultimately, bots improve over time, just like people. But – for the most part – their capabilities are designed to tackle tasks in a way that people can’t. Remember though, just like you, they’re not perfect and they need experience to perfect their tasks.

We believe in looking after bots, do you? If you want to talk RPA then contact PAteam today.