Upskilling Your Workforce and Growing RPA Talent

The world of work is changing. As intelligent automation extends through your business, you’ll find employees embracing it—and being happier as a result. Forbes found by surveying more than 300 global executives that deploying intelligent automation—RPA plus artificial intelligence (AI)—increases satisfaction at businesses (92%). And 52% said that employee satisfaction increased by 15% or more after implementing intelligent RPA.

As employees find their jobs becoming more creative and fulfilling once the mundane work is automated, some want to explore RPA technology in greater depth. Some become self-taught authorities within their business units. Those individuals, whom we call “RPA champions,” are a source of knowledge. Other workers turn to them for advice and help. Centers of Excellence (COE) tap them to develop crowd-sourced suggestions for filling the automation pipeline.

And many of these RPA champions want to do even more. Seeing the potential for automating business processes and creating their own bots, they become RPA citizen developers, a big step in the democratization of RPA and a sign that the technology has engaged and inspired your workforce.

When this occurs, you have an opportunity to continue to engage your employees in your RPA journey. And growing your internal talent is a great way to do that. Professional development tools and resources exist to more broadly train your workforce on RPA.

Step 1: Encourage their growth

It’s easy to get started with RPA training at Automation Anywhere University (AAU). AAU offers a wide variety of training resources—from self-paced eLearning to live virtual instructor-led classes to technical webinars and certifications. AAU has recorded more than 1.4 million course completions and awarded more than 176,000 certifications.

Whatever your employees’ learning goals, AAU has the necessary training resources to help them grow and advance along their chosen career paths. The AAU eLearning library provides RPA and intelligent automation online courses and comprehensive learning trails that are tailored to roles such as developers, business users, citizen developers, and IT.

Here’s a selection of eLearning opportunities that are available for free:

• Citizen developer: This is the learning trail for those who want to know more about RPA and building simple bots. From its “Introduction to RPA” course to “Getting Started with Building Bots,” the trail provides a solid foundation for understanding RPA and a jumping-off point to continue RPA learning.
• Business analyst: This learning trail is a great start for business users who want to dive deeper to analyze business processes deeper, assess their suitability for automation, and calculate the ROI on developing bots for the processes. The four-course trail can be completed in just a couple of hours.
• Bot developer: For those who are serious about continuing their RPA learning journey as a bot developer, this learning trail dives into building bots. Comprised of nearly a half-dozen online courses, the trail provides a “how-to” on meeting business requirements by developing, installing, deploying, and maintaining bots using Automation Anywhere.

For most of the learning trails, learners are awarded a badge credential upon successful completion. These credentials can be shared on social channels and with their employers.

Step 2: Level up with professional development

To really engage your employees who’ve expressed an interest in upskilling or reskilling in RPA, consider a learning subscription from AAU. This 12-month subscription provides unlimited access to all AAU RPA training and certification content. Subscribers can attend as many live virtual instructor-led training classes as they like (even repeat classes), enroll in all premium eLearning content, and register and take the RPA professional certification exams.

Step 3: Reward them for getting accredited

For those employees who are interested in furthering their RPA careers and getting RPA certified, AAU offers two certification programs: Advanced RPA Professional and Master RPA Professional. For your RPA professionals, this is an excellent way for them to get to the top of their class. They will gain the competitive edge with Automation Anywhere certifications, instantly gaining recognition and credibility within the RPA industry and differentiating themselves—and your company—in an increasingly competitive landscape.

Give them the support they need

Support is where your RPA COE team comes in. To successfully deploy automation across your organization and engage employees throughout, it’s essential to establish clear governance and boundaries. As with any successful program, set goals, establish best practices, and track and manage outcomes.

RPA is here to stay. It is already transforming how your employees work. By encouraging them to learn new skills and upskill with RPA, you are also creating business value by putting the power of automation into the hands of those who best know your business processes and can positively impact change. Recognizing the value that your employees can bring and empowering them to grow not only allows you to grow your own RPA team in a competitive labor market but it keeps them exceedingly engaged in your business while developing RPA evangelists.