The Human Side of RPA: the Prudential Story of Change Management

As we further incorporate digital labor – “bots and brains” – into the workplace, we will only see a positive impact on business and industry if we manage people’s expectations and capabilities for working with this digital technology. Adrienne Peseller is leading the RPA change management effort at Prudential, where the digital workforce is becoming an increasingly integral part of the fabric of operations. In our interview, she shares the value of proactively engaging with people to equip them to embrace “intelligent automation.”

Barbra: A lot of time the human or change management element of incorporating RPA into the business operations is the last consideration. When and how did you get involved with RPA and what is your role?  

Adrienne: At Prudential, we have the benefit of being part of a group that has a view into enterprise-wide initiatives. Initiatives are supported by a multi-faceted project team that includes a project manager, business leaders, and a dedicated change management professional. Even as RPA was being considered as an initiative, change management was at the table and able to assess early on: what are the implications from a people perspective and how can we best prepare the organization?

Barbra: What about HR – part of the team?

Adrienne: Yes, HR is part of the multi-disciplinary team—they are consultative partners to us in the change management work, and they focus on additional talent aspects such as organizational design, compensation structure, job impact, talent mobility and changes etc.  

Barbra: What excites people in Prudential about RPA? What makes them nervous? How do you capitalize or take advantage of each in a change management program?  

Adrienne: The degree of excitement and nervousness depends on background and exposure to RPA, so we have focused on trying to raise awareness and education around RPA to reduce people seeing threat, and instead seeing possibilities.

One thing we faced was that some people believed there will be robots working physically in the organization, but that isn’t the case and we needed to start there with the education and awareness. With some leaders, their first reaction is “this is cool” and “let’s go!” Others are more tentative and slower to adopt. We have been able to demonstrate that RPA helps us free up employee time by doing the routine and rules-driven work for them. In periods of time when we have more work and can’t hire to address it, robotic process automation can alleviate volume issues and create capacity. RPA is positioned as an additional option in the toolbox for facing business challenges, creating capacity, and managing expenses. RPA has also offered new opportunities for our talent—giving people a chance to learn a new capability, be involved in something completely new and use skills such as project management in new ways.  

Barbra: How do you set expectations with business executives and work with them on what it means to manage human and digital labor? 

Adrienne: We have worked to set manager expectations, provide them with tools and information, and personify the bots to help make them part of the team. A challenge we still face is that the managers don’t necessarily “trust” that the process will get done and may spend time up front checking in and validating. We had to build confidence on the accuracy and dependability, and have used the fact that the bot doing the work reduces errors and manages risk to help managers through this trust issue—some of that has come with success stories to prove it.

Before we had success stories, we started at the top level by building sponsorship with the executive team, and creating the right business case. From there we reached out business-by-business and leader-by-leader to understand the opportunity: What are the current needs in the business unit? We wanted to hear and understand the real challenges and talk about how RPA could be part of a solution. During this time, we also started to identify pockets of potential resistance, and we kept people involved and got them engaged at the right time for them. We have focused on identifying interest and champions, educating, and building evidence along the way. A year later, we have one group who was saying, “not interested” now identifying opportunities to use RPA. When people are ready, we move forward.

Barbra: Did everyone get their hands on the technology – the RPA software? 

Adrienne: No—we have some people who use and are trained on using the software, but others who are simply trained on the concepts of RPA and operational processes. We have different segments of training to address the different roles – RPA 101 to understand what it is and how to identify opportunities for it, as well as the structure and how it works at Prudential. There is a separate training for designers and developers, which was handled by the software vendor. Over time, we developed an online reference tool and training for the designers and developers to use as needed. It includes an onboarding platform on how RPA is used at Prudential, the standard operating procedures, and success stories. As we have turnover in resources, we didn’t want to lose time putting solutions in place. This platform helps.

Barbra: What are the key considerations for change management when an organization is going through digital transformation or simply, broader use of RPA?

Adrienne: General change management practices apply – gain executive sponsorship, be transparent, share a vision, know your business case and tie all you do back to that business case. Help people through personal transitions, including addressing the range of excitement and fear. 

A key factor is the middle management team. Many groups within Prudential are already working with virtual teams, so we could build on what was familiar to prepare them to manage bots as part of a team that wasn’t always sitting at a desk in the office. We then talk about the fact that we want everyone to focus on results –team results and outcomes—and the bot is not a person but is a part of the team. We show the benefits like increased accuracy, improved compliance, reduced risk, and improved quality as well as the ability to get more work done. People start to “feel” the impact of the digital labor and get excited about the possibilities.

We also brought in personification. Every bot is assigned to a business team. The team owns the bot and gives it a name – within a set of guidelines so that we have consistency and recognition. Our naming convention uses BOT as the last name and some variation of Rob – like Robin or Roberta — for a first name. There is a Bot family in the employee directory. They handle processes like people – their email is sent from a personified bot, not a number or unrecognized sender.

Barbra: When is the change management project done?  

Adrienne: It’s a program that evolves and grows—we are never truly done when it comes to managing change. First, we build on the foundation we created to keep maturing, expanding and responding to the evolution of RPA at Prudential. We manage groups who are at different places with the change and meet them where they are at to achieve results—some are excited to implement new bots and valuing the opportunity and some are just dipping their toes in the water.

Bottom line: We focus our efforts and conversations about RPA on the story – the value of robotic process automation for Prudential, employees, managers, and our customers.

Thank you, Adrienne. What stands out to me, in particular, is the story around integrating bots into teams by focusing on outcomes. Do you want to impact outcomes with your team? Then use bots to increase transaction speed and accuracy and focus brains on interesting work based on insight and exceptions. Adrienne will also be joining our panel discussion on culture and talent for change at the upcoming HfS Summit: The Future of Operations.