We have been through the outsourcing routine. A consultant sits next to us to document each process, someone in management decides which processes can be outsourced, a standard operating process is created, and the process is outsourced.

Management sells the idea to shareholders, senior executives etc. as a way to cut costs, standardise and improve efficiencies. Employees are told that the unfortunate loss of some employees will result in a better work experience for those who remain. They will get to actually have lunch, go home on time and finally have the weekend off while all those people in the Outsourced Centre are working away 24 by 7.

My experience speaking to clients who have gone through this process has been, to put it diplomatically, mixed. In fact both the management and the employees in some case have experienced the opposite of what was promised and are wary to say the least.

Well for all you tired souls along comes the Robot or to use the correct terminology, the bot. Said bot is going to “perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone.” The bot will eliminate time and cultural differences, cost less, and may even be able to adapt to a changing environment.

Those conference calls with the OutSourced Centre where you are both speaking different and mutually exclusive versions of English will disappear. You will all be able to communicate to the bots via a standard programming language that you presumably all know. If not, you will communicate your desires and dissatisfactions to you friendly IT person who will in turn communicate with this new army of bots.

That is if you haven’t outsourced the IT person’s role already. In which case, you are, sadly, back to square one.