Analysis from McKinsey has found that 67% of organizations have ramped up their adoption of AI and automation over the past year or so.
While this has been a necessity during a time where millions of people are working from home, the importance of soft skills, such as communication and empathy, have never been more important than today.
So what role does automation serve in the evolution of soft skills with a distributed workforce?
According to research from UiPath, over 70% of executives and managers said they are most likely to hire a candidate with experience in automation and AI, even if the job description does not necessarily require those skills.
Automation has given workers the chance to free up their time in order to work on other things. However, it’s clear that this technology cannot fully replace the “human” aspect that all companies need.
This is why employees have to find new ways to use some of this free time by expanding their soft skills, such as coming up with creative solutions to problems, creating new content for newsletters, building new policies focused on improving the employee experience and more.
Additionally, automation has the opportunity to empower collaboration in a way that has never been replicated.
Although the lack of in-person teamwork has been evident in the past year, automation software makes it easy for colleagues to work on a single project within the same document. This technology can also be applied to communication with customers through auto replies, including informing them of any changes in policies they should be aware of, shipping expectations and more.