Individuals
still need to
understand
how and why
systems do
what they do
to the next to understand how things
work holistically, and then maybe
become a general manager in a few
years. This is still really important to
have at entry level,” she comments.
“But I think automation is making
career progression faster, because it
makes it easier for employers to focus
on better training.”
Indeed it’s no coincidence that in
the same year Edward was ‘born’
Edwardian Hotels London launched a
10-year partnership with Imperial
College Business School to deliver
training for future senior managers.
The hotel group puts 250 staff through
this training every year.
Marais explains that, rather than
creating a future skills gap, automating
entry-level tasks and providing this
formal training to help staff progress to
senior positions will ultimately result in
better-equipped managers. “We believe
that we’re giving them the skills to
continue within our company and
within other companies – we’re actually
giving them greater service skills,”
she adds. “It’s as if the design of
automation is generating more
time to train people on fundamental
hospitality skills.”
Accountancy
In accountancy RPA has become a vital
tool in auditing and book-keeping,
reducing the hours spent on routine
tasks like extracting transactional
information – an exercise that might
previously have been allocated to
trainees. Such is the impact on the
profession that the Institute of
Chartered Accountants in England
and Wales (ICAEW) has recently
announced changes to its syllabus, with
future students being trained and
examined on how to use RPA
technologies to interrogate client data.
“The qualification is designed
to reflect what’s going on in the
workplace. Audit workflow is all done
with software now, and analysis is done
by people. Having the skills to do the
Entry-level L&D Strategic HR
analysis is absolutely crucial,” says
Adam Birt, head of qualifications,
strategy and development at ICAEW.
However, some traditional skills are
still crucial he adds: “We must still
focus on the basic principles. For
instance, students have got to be able
to understand double-entry bookkeeping
to be able to understand
financial statements.”
This view is echoed by Graham
Burnett, head of talent development at
Mazars UK: “This is definitely a wider
issue within the industry and has been
voiced by a number of firms.”
Mazars is addressing this concern by
working with tuition providers and
training bodies, as well as adapting its
own internal training. Burnett says the
firm has introduced a LinkedIn
Learning library to ensure trainees are
still acquiring the basic skills they’ll
need to progress – something he feels
also presents an opportunity for
employees to stand out from the crowd.
“Those that seek out that level of
understanding, despite lack of practical
experience, will be able to progress in
their future career because of their
expectations of the understanding,”
he says.
Jessica Damms, HR director at
Kreston Reeves, says the challenge for
learning and development teams is to
pre-empt and prevent a skills gap
emerging between entry- and senior-
level roles. “We encourage our people
not to become reliant upon
automation,” she says. “Individuals
still need to understand how and why
systems do what they do, so we train
the fundamental accounting skills
outside of automation.”
On the face of it those fundamental
skills may appear to be rudimentary
box-ticking, she concedes. But they are
vital when it comes to adding value to
client relationships. “Crucially what
automation does is create space,”
she says. This is a space that Kreston
Reeves is using to train employees
in advisory and relationship skills
as well as basic accounting practices,
she adds.
As Damms warns: “A future skills
gap will certainly emerge should we
not adapt.” HR
hrmagazine.co.uk November 2019 HR 37
/hrmagazine.co.uk