Navigating The War for Workers in Today’s Rapidly Changing Labor Market of Unpredictability
The market is great if you are looking for a job, the current unemployment rate is 3.5%, but the market is not looking that great if you are looking to add new team members. We are still sitting in a gap of about 1.7 million job openings for every unemployed person. In addition, the number of people voluntarily quitting their jobs is averaging 4.2 million per month. The current labor market is historically unbalanced, which has created competition for workers between businesses. Today more than ever, businesses are relying on technology to fill the void of staffing shortages.
Statistics show that workers are leaving jobs where they feel their skills are being underutilized, such as performing redundant task. Many businesses are implementing what is known as a “human-led, tech powered approach,” by investing in both digital transformation and human skills. This concept delivers automation to handle the monotonous, routine tasks that have been shown to drive people to find other jobs. By allowing automation to handle these repetitive tasks, this frees up the valuable time needed to provide training and strengthen the capabilities of skilled employees to focus on tasks that require a human touch. This has been proven to give greater job satisfaction among employees and less turnover rates.
The Perfect Storm
Finding qualified staff into today’s market is next to impossible. From retailers to restaurants and more, there are few areas that haven’t been hit by the current labor shortage, and it has left many employers scrambling for solutions. The larger problem with people leaving the workforce is, many of the older skilled workers whom companies relay on to train new recruits have exited. According to a recent study, it takes about one to two years for an employee to be fully productive. Couple that with an average tenure rate of four years, and you have the making for the perfect storm.
As many positions remain unfilled, businesses are struggling to provide consistence services, especially those that are consumer facing. The most notable example is the airline industry, where we are witnessing massive disruption in delays, flight cancellations, and subpar service experiences. As the airline industry has done an amazing job of automating its ticketing and back-office functions through technology, the customer-facing elements of the service, such as greeting them and providing support, is not something that can be supplemented with robots and technology.
The Ultimate Mix
Throughout history, humans have been building machines to create better products, scale production, and make their jobs easier. The benefits that come from these innovations are the ability to optimize costs and outcomes. It also enables businesses to utilize structured learning models to train their workforce, being it is much easier to train a human to pull levers than build a machine. Supplementing our workforce with technology has been around since the industrial revolution, we are now leveraging new advancements like never before, as we enter the race to automate.
Humans and technology can be a great mix, as they each have unique abilities that the other does not. Humans can provide social interactions, create connections, and resolve issues that require critical thinking. Technology, on the other hand, can offer greater accuracy, efficiency, and eliminate repetitive tasks to enable workers to evolve into more productive roles. While businesses have plenty of sophisticated technology options to assist in meeting customer expectations, it is important to find the right system that allows for human intervention if needed.
Digital Workers
There are so many buzz words when it come to the latest technology, from artificial intelligence, which are systems that can mimic human intelligence to perform tasks and improve their own abilities based on the information they collect, to augmented intelligence, such as virtual assistants that do not make decisions for you, but simply provide the data you need when you need it. If you have ever used Alexa, Siri, or another virtual assistant, you’ve used augmented intelligence, it is on-demand data that it collects from an array of sources, such as the weather forecast or latest news.
But have you ever heard of Intelligent Automation (IA)? It combines several advanced technologies to create end-to-end business processes that have the ability, at their highest form, to think, learn and adapt on their own. Intelligent automation can be utilized to different extents and is sometimes referred to as intelligent process automation and hyper-automation. Its highest and best use is making flexible, resilient, modern business operating models possible. Effective IA takes existing processes and integrates them to drive sustainable and scalable changes into its framework.
In the multifamily housing industry, we have done a great job with creating technology that automates marketing, social media, and capture leads through chatbots. Now we can take a prospect from application to a signed lease without human intervention through intelligent automation. Leases can be built-in real time, along with digital invoices to capture payment, and digitally delivered for signature. It eliminates human error and enables communities to accelerate their leasing process. Ready to add an army of digital workers to your community? Learn how 365 Connect can automate your leasing today.
