The Rise of a New Age of Human-Centric Automation

The Industrial Age created a new relationship between human beings and machines. Humans had used tools for thousands of years, but these tools were almost always driven by human or animal energy. With the invention of the steam engine, machines were suddenly primarily driven by non-human or non-animal energy — energy mostly generated, at least until recently, by the combustion of fossil fuels.

During each stage of this industrial revolution, we progressed to ever more powerful and complex machines, from steam-powered looms to locomotives, factory assembly lines, and computers. Yet, in all these cases, workers either controlled or were controlled by a machine using a non-human or non-animal source of energy to build things or deliver services.  

Often humans in the workplace were seen as a lesser part or a cog of the mechanized or computerized processes conducted by the machine and treated as consumable components of the machines.

Measuring People Like Machines

For example, rules and metrics for human workers were either extrapolations of those used in the agrarian age, related to piece-part measurements, or, especially today, the same metrics as those used for machines. The efforts and attendance of human workers were treated the same as capacity utilization, like yields for a piece of equipment and other machinery-based productivity measures. People were measured by how many ears of corn they could harvest, how many shirts they could sew, or how many wheels they could assemble within a given time.  

Work in and of itself was assumed to be boring, tedious, and something from which people wanted to escape. At best, workers could aspire to move up the ranks and supervise other bored workers rather than have to conduct machine-driven processes themselves. The role of a manager was more of a jailer than a coach, and their relationship with their workers was based on a distrust of human nature. 

And through every iteration of the Industrial Age, which began during the latter part of the 18th century and has progressed to today, not much has changed in how we view work.  

Now, some say a new fourth Industrial Age is now upon us. This age is described as a wave of advances that will transform how our physical and digital worlds intersect, enabled by emerging technologies like intelligent automation, the Internet of Things (IoT), 3D printing, and genetic engineering. But is it really a fourth Industrial Age, and thus a continuation of the Industrial Ages before it?

If we look carefully at the changes taking place, we see it is not a continuation because the key relationship in this age will not be between humans and machinery but between humans and automation.  

What Is Automation?

I do not mean automation like the robots you see in manufacturing environments, as those robots are part of the last stage of the industrial age, the computing age. I mean software automation,  the kind of automation that will change the work of human beings forever. I am referring to software bots.

This is the kind of automation that will replace the mundane and tedious work humans have been doing for 250 years. Rather than humans doing the repetitive, tedious work involved in controlling (and being controlled by) machines, automation will enable software bots — digital assistants — to do this work instead. 

This will free human beings to do the work only a human being can do. Such human-centric process automation will move human beings from acting as cogs in mechanical processes and elevate them to do what they do best — creating new ideas, solving problems, building relationships and completing other higher-level strategic work that drives business success. 

I only need to look at my own team to see what this new, automated future will look like. We have deployed over 100 digital assistants in our human resources function. These digital assistants can count heads, move data, calculate bonuses, and even create individual development plans for our nearly 2,000 global employees. 

Last year alone, we used automation to add to our capacity the equivalent of 2.5 additional team members. This freed my direct reports up from having to do mundane and manual tasks, liberating them to instead work on more creative, engaging, and fulfilling human projects. They are creating new development programs, investigating new ways of looking at data, coaching our managers more effectively, and engaging with our business partners on how to prepare for the future. And they have the freedom to think. They are doing things only humans can do. In particular, they CARE. Only humans can care.  

See More: Why Automation Training Is an Essential Part of Today’s HR Processes and Workforce Preparation

Measuring Work in This New Age of Human-Centric Automation 

Creative, engagement, and emotional capacity will be the most important human capacity measures in the future. By giving every knowledge worker in the world at least a small part of their working time back, these workers will be able to build stronger relationships with their customers, interpret data in new ways, discover new cures for diseases, draft new building designs, develop new business models, and create new art.

Which leads me to another question: what is the role of leaders when they are leading humans freed from rote work? When these leaders do not have Industrial Age metrics to fall back upon, how will they measure employees’ contributions in this more human-centric Automation Age?

I expect these metrics will finally model humans’ true, unique capacities, measuring how well people learn, grapple with issues, create, innovate, engage with others, and care. 

So, no, we are not entering a fourth Industrial Age. We are entering a completely new age, the Age of Human-centric Automation, an age that will foster more human creativity, engagement, and caring.

Are we entering the fourth Industrial Age or an Age of Human-centric Automation? Tell us what you think on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .

MORE ON HR INNOVATION

• The Future is Here: The Evolution and Implications of AI in the Workplace 
• From data to action: how HR can use AI tech to boost employee wellbeing
• The HR tech tool: 7 advantages with no-code survey software
• What You May Not Have Factored Into “The Great Resignation”