Automation Is the Next Big Skill
- David Creelman
- 22 時間前
- 読了時間: 2分
The hype about AI agents is both confusing and misleading. It helps to step back and ask a simple question: What do AI agents actually do?
The answer: they automate tasks.
AI—agents included—makes automation easier and cheaper. If something becomes easier and cheaper, we should expect (and want) more of it. That means HR professionals need to become skilled at automation. Hence the title: automation is the next big skill.
What Does Automation Skill Really Involve?
People often assume “automation skill” means learning tools: no-code platforms, workflow builders, or the latest AI features. Those matter, but they are not the heart of the skill.
The real skill is understanding how automation succeeds or fails regardless of the tools. Essentially: knowing what goes wrong.
Here are the most common failure modes:
• After considerable effort, the automation turns out to be too hard to do.
• It does something catastrophically wrong.
• It works 99 times out of 100, but you must review every case—erasing any time saved.
• It becomes expensive to maintain (technical debt).
• It introduces security vulnerabilities.
• It doesn’t fit with the rest of the organization’s tools.
Experienced automation practitioners have seen these issues repeatedly. Others can learn them through training or by working alongside someone with experience, rather than learning the hard way.
A frequent warning about automation is that you must redesign the entire process first. With AI-enabled task automation, that is less relevant. This next wave is about automating tasks or parts of tasks, not re-engineering whole processes. AI lets non-technical HR pros automate small, targeted pieces of work—while staying fully involved in the process.
Why Automation Is Hard
Automation is difficult because tasks are usually more complex and idiosyncratic than they appear—even to the person who performs them daily.
You might think, “All this involves is typing employee data into a form.” But once you try to automate it (or delegate it to an intern), all the quirks appear:
• Employee’s names too long for fields
• Odd employment situations that don’t match any category
• Special rules for employees in another country
When you do the task manually, you unconsciously solve these exceptions. When you automate, each exception becomes a potential failure that slows development and increases fragility. In many cases, the idiosyncrasies are the work—something you only learn once you try to automate.
Where Is the Payoff?
The list of things that can go wrong may sound discouraging. In practice, it simply means automation is a skill—one you can develop.
Once you build that skill, you’ll discover countless small tasks that AI-enabled automation can streamline. You won’t need IT. You won’t need a contractor. You won’t need to buy another big system. As your confidence grows, you’ll tackle more ambitious automations, and the benefits will accumulate.
The path forward isn’t about mysterious or overhyped “AI agents”. It’s about faster, easier task automation carried out by people who understand how to make automation reliable.
That’s why automation is the next big skill.