Robotic Process Automation: A Qualitative Journey Through RPA's Impacts on Company Employees

abstract

Robotic process automation is usually justified in headcount terms, which is the least interesting thing about it. This study takes a qualitative route instead: thirteen semi-structured interviews with RPA practitioners across four multinational companies, asking what automation actually did to the people around it. The finding is that RPA does not straightforwardly displace employees, but it does reshape their work and the governance around it — and how much it reshapes depends on which automation strategy the organisation chose. Task-oriented programmes lean on citizen developers and move quickly at the cost of a coherent process view; process-oriented programmes rely on professional developers and demand far more structured governance. The chapter draws these threads into an integrated framework linking automation strategy, governance model, upskilling, and employee adaptation.

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