How Automation Oversold It's Own Capabilities

The global employment industry spent the last five years selling a promise: automate the complexity of hiring across borders. Reduce headcount. Eliminate friction. Let the software handle it.

As someone who has worked at some of the most leading technology companies my instinct is usually to build a better system, move faster, automate more. But after stepping into the CEO role at Oyster and hearing from customers about where their global employment systems were breaking down, I realized the failures  were not happening in payroll processing, onboarding workflows or contract generation; it was everything the technology could not touch. The performance exit in Germany that required a specific cultural approach, the benefits dispute in Brazil that needed someone who understood local norms, the restructure across five countries that required human judgment at every turn.

New research we commissioned from Everest Group put hard edges around what I was hearing anecdotally. The finding that stuck with me: Technology is no longer what separates the leaders from the laggards in global employment. Judgment is.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Inc.