With employees working from home over the past year, the construction industry has been more productive than any other field, according to Nintex’s recent Workplace 2021 Study. Terry Simpson, senior solutions engineer, Nintex, explains why some industries have been more productive than others and why automation technology may be responsible for that.
In early 2018, McKinsey DigitalOpens a new window found that 92% of company leaders surveyed said their business model wouldn’t remain viable if their industries couldn’t find a way to digitize faster and more effectively. Their projection was prescient; just two years later, COVID-19 upended businesses across the planet and forced organizations to accelerate digital transformation overnight.
Organizations that had already embraced digital processes and automation were able to pivot, while those that lagged found themselves behind the eight ball. As States went into lockdown, companies scrambled to transition to remote workforces and distribution channels, with varying degrees of success. Six months into the pandemic, Kate SmajeOpens a new window , a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, said, “The fundamental reality is that the accelerating speed of digital means that we are increasingly living in a winner-takes-all world.â€
Learn More: 3 Ways To Automate Recruiting and Onboarding With Technology for Faster Time To Hire
So, Who’s Winning?
The Nintex Workplace 2021 StudyOpens a new window surveyed 1,000 American workers about their sentiments around their current jobs and the future of work and found that, across industries, 70% of employees reported being more productive than expected while working remotely over the past year. The data also reveals that productivity levels varied in the U.S. regions by up to 25%.
We also broke down our findings by industry. The big surprise was that employees in the construction industry reported the highest levels of productivity, at 87%. In fact, construction was a full 11% ahead of the next highest industry, technology workers, with 76% of respondents reporting being more productive than anticipated while working remotely, followed by the financial services industry, with 70% reporting greater productivity levels. These industries were followed by education (61%), government (56%) and perhaps unsurprisingly, given the circumstance, healthcare (54%).
The Key to Their Success: Automation
Construction industry workers surveyed reported that 90% of their workplaces use automation/AI-driven tools across business processes and workflows to a significant or moderate extent. The number was just 85% of financial services workers and only 69% of technology workers, which one might naturally assume to be the most technologically advanced.
While all three industries reported having extremely modern and efficient workplace tools in place before the pandemic, the disparity between construction, technology and financial services may stem from a reluctance among the latter two to leverage cloud-based applications due to perceived security risks. As a result, the financial services industry is heavily reliant on on-premises installations, especially in banking. Meanwhile, software providers are prioritizing cloud-based feature functionality over on-premises feature functionality or getting rid of on-prem entirely.
The construction industry is different. Their workers are remote in the field, and they rely heavily on cloud-based platforms. So, they gain the advantage of new features, new functionality and software.
When we think of construction, we think of the physical labor that happens on-site, but there’s a lot of efficiencies that happens behind the scenes. It’s all about project management and how efficiently resources and schedules are managed. Sourcing materials, allocating labor across the organization, acquiring new labor and onboarding right on the job site — these are tasks that are greatly improved with process automation. And it’s a big cost-saving.
Government and healthcare are also heavily reliant on on-prem databases, although the government sector is progressing more toward the cloud every day. The healthcare sector has been slower to adopt cloud-based applications, partly due to HIPAA complianceOpens a new window needs. But the industry’s dependence on on-prem installations has sacrificed functionality that could improve internal efficiencies and provide a better user experience for their customers/patients. Now the pandemic has thrown the healthcare sector into the deep end, forcing providers to become more efficient while also offering remote or contactless services to their patients.
If the healthcare industry continues the accelerated transition, we all might win.
Learn More: Automated Health Screening: Another Addition to the New Normal in the Post-COVID-19 World
Aim and Pivot
Time and again, we’ve seen organizations postpone investing in technology without fully understanding the economic impact in both the short and long term. Business leaders often think, “We’ve done it this way for years, we’ll be fine.†And they are fine. Until they need to react quickly to a business need or an outside event (like a pandemic), then they find themselves foundering. Having the systems — the platform, the software and the skill set — in place today allows you to pivot to changing needs tomorrow.
And that’s a really important part of the technology element — being able to jump on an opportunity to automate as soon as you see it. Better systems mean better efficiency for customers and employees alike.
This brings us back to the construction sector. According to an analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the industry will need to hire an additional 430,000 skilled workersOpens a new window this year. Combine that with a growing labor shortageOpens a new window , and you have a competitive landscape where companies need a differentiator.
In this winner-takes-all environment, do you want to offer prospective employees automated systems for everything from onboarding to logging hours to requesting vacation, or do you want to send them a stack of forms and ask them to fax them back?
It’s a no-brainer, really. Call your shot.