Businesses waste a staggering $5 trillion every year on lost productivity just because employees spend too much time on repetitive admin tasks.

And it seems to be affecting morale. In the UK, 29% of employees say they’ve become disengaged due to inefficiencies at work.

Automation tools help to streamline processes and free up staff

If your team is wasting time on boring and repetitive tasks, it might be time to lighten their load a little. Automation tools help to streamline work processes, freeing up time for staff to focus on more creative pursuits that robots can’t manage.

Here are a few suggestions as to which tasks you could automate.

Scheduling meetings

Trying to get everyone together in the same room at the same time can be a scheduling headache.

By automating workplace planning, you can book meeting rooms or reschedule appointments in an instant – and everyone gets notified as soon as any changes occur. You can also set up meeting reminders, so no one has an excuse for forgetting to attend.

Data back-up

Your data is a prized asset, so you wouldn’t want to lose it if your computers crash or you pick up a virus. But backing it up manually takes hours.

Instead, you can automatically back up your data in the cloud to ensure you’ll always have access to up-to-date files even if something goes wrong in-house.

Workplace gives you integrations with file-sharing platforms like Dropbox and OneDrive

With Workplace, you get the tools you need in the cloud along with integrations for file-sharing platforms such as Dropbox and OneDrive to automate data back-up.

And as a mobile-first platform, you can pick up and collaborate on documents whilst on the go.

Invoices and expenses

You can automate many of the everyday financial tasks

You can automate many of the everyday financial tasks such as paying bills, managing invoices and keeping track of receipts and expenses.

Social media marketing

Automating some social media output enables you to spend more time on other things

But carefully crafting engaging posts to update your customers and followers can be a time-consuming process. Automating some – but not all – of your social media posts enables you to spend more time on other things.

You can schedule posts in advance, share other content, and see who’s talking about your brand online so you know where to target your marketing.

Tasks you shouldn’t automate

Automation isn’t right for all business processes because they’re best handled by humans. Things like:

Complex customer cases

Bots, AI, and self-service software could be the future of customer service

But when it comes to resolving more complicated queries and complaints, you should always have the human touch. Without it, a company’s reputation can suffer.

Creativity and innovation

Creative and ideas-based tasks are best left in human hands. And that applies when you’re designing web content, brainstorming or developing more effective training methods.

Automation platforms don’t yet have the same ability as humans to think ‘outside the box’, but they can empower people with the tools they need to innovate.

Quality control

While automation can help speed up the making and testing of manufactured goods, you still need human input to ensure the quality of the final product.

Artificial Intelligence can’t fully appreciate the user experience in the same way a human would.