Digital Transformation Lead for Zurich Insurance Company
Add bookmarkDigital transformation
Are you happy with your work/life balance? Are you in the office first thing in the morning, and the last one to leave every evening? Are you regularly superseding your contractual 8 hours of work a day? Do you want more time with your loved ones and family without compromising your work performance?
Unless you answered with a resounding “No!” then you need to listen to this week’s podcast. Deepak Subbarao is the Lean and Digital Transformation Lead for Zurich Insurance Company and has the fascinating job of trying to understand businesses and add value, without blindly jumping on the next technological hype. “There’s new sets of technology every day, but how do you really use those to add value to your business?”
Can technology really help us to work faster, work better and most of all, work less? If we want to save time to allow space for people to work on what we should be doing, how do we remove the unnecessary work and can technology really help?
Generate report, rinse, repeat
Automating processes has helped employees do the repetitive jobs. Imagine walking into the office tomorrow morning to find all the reports you need to gather data for, and analyze, have already been prepared, instead of spending half your day clicking around systems to generate them - that is even before you start the important work of understanding what the reports are telling you.
Read: Defining Digital Experience
Deepak believes it is all about working smarter, not harder. The Baby Boomer mindset very much believes in brute force - get to work and work as hard as possible. Millennials and Generation X however are saying; if it doesn’t add value to the business, and I don’t get paid more to do it, then why do it? They ask; ‘how can I get the same job done, in less time?’
What if that extra pair of hands you need, is a robot? Deepak states that Zurich Insurance Co. are not trying to replace people with robots; “We know that’s not the future… that mindset is set up for failure, it’s going to come back to you - someday, your job is going to be replaced by a robot… but there are limitations of what a robot can do, and we acknowledge that. So stop counting the bots.” It’s not just about saving money and adding dollars to the bottom line for Zurich - it’s about approaching it in a way that makes sense to the individual, whilst not putting jobs at risk.
What about job security?
However, Deepak does acknowledge that job security cannot be assured, he poses the question; “is your job interesting? Is it really what you want to do and have you been trained, educated and hired for the tasks you’re doing? Most people say no, in reality they’re hired to copy and paste, pull data out of ten systems and put them together.” If robots can take away those copy, paste tasks and leave you space to do the job you were hired to do, job satisfaction would increase and by having a better work/life balance.
Read More: Why X-Data is Key to Breaking Through in the Experience Economy
Deepak says Zurich’s main goal and the measure of success is cutting overtime and finding solutions that gives employees more time to see their kids, their partner and enjoy their hobbies.
Click below to listen to how they work with companies to better their processes, integrate not just technology - but the right technological solutions to help your staff and business grow in the right direction.