Late in 2020, CampTek Software partnered with graduate students from Northeastern University’s Experiential Network to conduct research on the general workforce’s sentiments around automation and their familiarity with the term Citizen Developer. The data from this preliminary study was gathered and presented to CampTek Software in the form of graphs and charts to display the key findings from the students’ research. These key findings are currently aiding CampTek Software with the roll out of a new program called, “Citizen Development as a Service (CDaaS)”.
Survey Demographics
Survey participants ranged in age from 20 to 68 years old and included male, female and non-binary respondents. Healthcare and eight other industries were represented. The majority of survey respondents work in Healthcare. Education level ranged from high school to graduate level with the highest number of respondents indicating an undergraduate level of education. The graphs below further illustrate the participant demographics.
Survey Goals
One of the main goals of this research was to better understand the general workforce’s attitudes around automation. In order to explore this, researchers asked participants whether or not they agreed with four sentiments; People will be replaced by automation at some point, coding experience will be a requirement in my field at some point, salary will increase after acquiring automation skills and computers are smarter than people. The graph below illustrates these results. Each bar color represents a different question, and each grouping represents a different response. Although the majority of those surveyed believe automation will replace them at some point, there is a strong belief that learning automation skills will increase their employee-value and increase their salary. The is the most interesting conclusion from this data.
Gauging familiarity with the terms “citizen developer” and “automation” were additional research goals. The graph below depicts results. The data clearly illustrates that, although many people recognize the term automation, very few people know how to define a citizen developer.
Finally, this study explored participants’ beliefs about how much time they could save with automation. The first graph pictured below illustrates the number of hours saved per day. Most people felt they could save about 30 minutes to an hour of work per day. The second graph pictured below illustrates the number of hours saved in a week. Most people felt they could save between one and three hours of work per week. These numbers may seem insignificant, but it is important to keep in mind the nature of the tasks robots are completing. They handle repetitive and tedious tasks, which to humans, can make one hour of work seem like three. By handing over repetitive and monotonous tasks to robots, humans save time. In exchange, they gain the mental capacity to focus on the more creative side of their jobs.
Survey Conclusions
In conclusion, the data shows that the general work force is familiar with automation and understands the benefit in acquiring automation skills. Automation can both save time and add value to the business user’s skill set. As a result of this survey, CampTek Software has created the Citizen Development as a Service program for businesses. This program can help any company empower their employees with automation skills. Through the creation of this program and additional training resources, anyone can become a Citizen Developer and learn to utilize automation to help streamline work and save time. For more information about our Citizen Development as a Service program, follow this link to our website.
For a brief overview of what you can accomplish with StudioX, watch this informative video made by UiPath: Introducing StudioX: the no-code tool for building automations
