For most businesses, the bulk of work happens during the day. Conforming to the 9-to-5 schedule that has dominated the work cycle for decades makes it easier to gather everyone at a similar time to work together towards common goals. Yet despite the strict emphasis on the traditional workday, work often does not truly end at 5 pm. Some employees will stay later and burn the midnight oil by direction, choice, or necessity to meet deadlines or catch up on a backlog. Day in and day out, the grind continues. Your night shift might only comprise a few staffers, or it could be a larger group. Does this have to be the status quo forever? With the emergence of new technologies, the answer is a clear “no.” In fact, many companies miss out on important benefits they could tap into right now by adding automation into the mix.
Why not let automation handle much of the work from 5 pm to 9 am instead of keeping people proverbially chained to their desks? A look at the effects of the night shift on employees and a closer consideration of why automation is the answer reveal exciting opportunities to explore.
Is It Time to Say Goodnight to the Traditional Night Shift?
A well-structured night shift contributes enormous value to an organization by carrying out critical tasks left over from the day and those that must be done before the next workday begins. However, those living the night shift lifestyle experience several detrimental effects as time goes by.
Night shift work disrupts the sleep cycle and ultimately degrades sleep quality. It may harm mental health and emotional well-being. Research remains ongoing, but there is evidence that a disruptive night-based lifestyle may even increase the risk of disease.
The demand for night shift work hasn’t decreased. If anything, it is likely on the rise in today’s global economy — but this poses a personnel problem. How are businesses solving the issues of burnout, mistakes, and dissatisfaction during the day shift? The answer is automation — and it can also benefit the night shift.
What Automation Can Already Do in the Workplace
Automation tools such as robotic process automation, or RPA, already have well-established footholds in many industries. For day shift workers, automation augments their work and aids them in accomplishing more every hour. It also frees up their time to focus on the most important business tasks. RPA handles the tedium while knowledge workers exercise their creativities to innovate new ideas and solutions that drive the business forward.
RPA shines when applied to rules-based workflows, connecting systems, contributing to better business processes, and boosting employee job satisfaction. There is already an enormous appetite for the advances automation brings during the day shift. Now is the time to think about how your digital “workforce” can help overnight, too.
What You Can Do by Adding RPA to the After-Hours Workflows
Why not look into adding more workers to the night shift — digital ones? Software robots powered by RPA may let you automate many of those tasks keeping people in the office late at night. Embrace opportunities to give human night shift workers more essential duties that could propel the business towards growth — or shorten shifts so workers can enjoy more sleep and better work-life balance. When there is often an adversarial relationship between night and day shifts, automation can bridge the divide and foster a more positive company culture.
RPA can contribute to many critical overnight workflows commonly found in offices today. For example, report generation and delivery on the status of key tasks or processes are things you can easily configure a software robot to do. Rather than relying on an individual in the office to manually process data and produce these reports, RPA can do it instead, potentially saving hours. RPA can also automate reminders to humans on call or in the office when needed.
Sometimes, you may find that most of the work you handle overnight can be automated. The level of change you can effect will vary based on the complexity of the work However, there are many opportunities here. By embracing overnight automation, you could shift teams back to the day shift and boost your productive capabilities even further.
The Benefits of More Overnight Automation
Bringing automation to the night shift can yield numerous benefits for your business. They start with the simple fact that it means beginning every workday more prepared and better equipped with quality information. The benefits go far beyond having a more leisurely morning, however.
Better automation and the workflow improvements that come with it help remove the strain from employees. They reduce the pressures that some staff may feel to remain in the office and work long hours even after others go home. Moreover, they reduce the errors that tired, burned-out employees, can introduce into your data.
Reducing exhaustion by reducing the need for after-hours work also means increased opportunities to do more and higher quality work. Tired employees will never function at their best — your business wants their best. When they can contribute meaningfully without an awkward schedule, you’ll find it may lead to more engaged employees and, thus, less turnover. That’s not to mention reducing night shift workers’ mental and physical health pressures.
Automation is the way forward, from boosting employee morale to spotting and addressing process inefficiencies with new tools. With it, you can improve company culture, become a better place to work, and generate savings doing it — all while improving productivity and quality.
Automation Through the Night: A Key Part of Tomorrow’s Work
Staying competitive has grown harder in many markets. Shifting economic conditions, rising competition, and other pressures can lead companies to work harder and longer. However, the need to keep workflows running doesn’t have to come with the human costs often associated with the night shift. Instead, by embracing the opportunities created by robotic process automation, making the night shift another source of value is within reach. How could your business benefit from the overnight work of tireless software robots?
