93 percent of employees are worried, to varying degrees, about their ability to cope with the changing needs of their job. This was the finding of a study on the impact of automation on the future of work, carried out by Forrester Consulting on behalf of UiPath and released yesterday. Out of that number, 39 percent are concerned that they may not be able to succeed in their currently existing job, and 14 percent actually feel threatened by the increasing complexity of their work.

Employee anxiety over automation, AI, and the changing nature of work has been well known for years, and runs alongside the acknowledgement by the employees themselves that the changes are actually beneficial to them. Depending on country, studies have found that anxiety may stem from job insecurity, or from a fear of having to learn new skills and processes: in Singapore, for example, one 2018 survey indicated that 48 percent of respondents were worried about having to change the way they perform their tasks.

Companies, however, are increasingly paying attention to employee anxiety and looking into ways to alleviate it. The Forrester Consulting study found that 63 percent of respondents are measuring and monitoring employee anxiety in order to better respond to it. Respondents also indicated that they were doing so for retention purposes, with one director of IT operations reportedly saying: “We need to absolutely make sure we’re measuring employee anxiety. Otherwise, they’ll leave and go to a more employee-centric organization.”

The top approach taken by decision makers in the study turned out to be keeping technology current. 64 percent of organizations indicated they would keep their technology upgraded to further simplify work processes, improve effectiveness, and thereby increase employee satisfaction. A further 58 percent said they would provide transferable workplace certifications, and another 42 percent said they would invest in upskilling their employees, to the point of providing financial support to employees who wanted to pursue additional certifications related to their line of work.

Cited in the study, one vice president of HR said: “Supporting employees to gain technical knowledge is important because that’s what we will look for when hiring for more complex technical roles.”