Automation in the workplace

In my early days of working in IT, one of my coworkers mentioned to me, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have everything automated?”  I looked at him and asked him what would I do then?  This thought stuck in my mind as the years went by and I began to realize that tedious tasks could be automated to make life easier and to be able to shift focus on other priorities.  It wasn’t until I began working in Financial Aid as a software specialist that I really saw the tedious manual task that staff did every day.  I thought this was normal and everyone had to do it manually.  It wasn’t until I was tasked to update 1000 student records and change a single requirement due to someone not properly entering the correct data.  I met with my boss, and he agreed that some manual processes should be automated to keep the workload from being overwhelming to staff. 

I began to talk with my peers and noticed that they were frustrated with the amount of work that was set on them for these manual tasks that took hours just to finish one process just to be met with another project that required manual updating of hundreds of records.  The questions that popped in my head, “How can I make it better for the staff?”. In my 5305 class, I wrote an Innovation proposal that detailed the issues and possible solutions to our dean.  The literature review focuses more on depth in how automation can alleviate a lot of these frustrations that staff are experiencing while providing solutions that can lead to greater work satisfaction.  Creating an implementation outline to provide a timeline in how automation in Banner can benefit our department can show the impact that automation can offer.

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