Human Friendly Automation: A Literature Review on the Role of the Human Factor in AI-Driven Business Process Automation

Business Process Management (BPM) enables organizations to boost efficiency, improve quality, cut costs, accelerate process times, and maintain competitiveness. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Generative AI (GenAI), the focus has moved from rules-based process automation for clearly defined processes to more nuanced cognitive automation of complex processes. These innovations clearly have huge influence on the role of the human in organizations. Job profiles, routines and job satisfaction are affected. Interestingly enough, the current role of the human or employee in the BPM, AI and automation literature seems to be mainly a role of a production factor. Our literature review highlights the importance of considering the human factor in AI-driven business process automation and identifies a research gap on the role of the human factor. To structure the current state of literature we introduce a holistic human-friendly automation framework. We see a demand for future research to address gaps in understanding the human factor in automation, particularly in terms of ethical considerations, demographic shift, and the changing relationship between humans and machines. Specifically, investigating the roles of management, HR, and employees in AI-driven automation initiatives may provide valuable insights for organizations seeking to balance process optimization with employee engagement and satisfaction.