Automation of work and work processes has in recent years been deployed to increase productivity and efficiency in the hospital sector and related care sectors. While it is often assumed that jobs disappear with automation, research convincingly shows that automated systems are heavily dependent on human work, but that this work most often remains invisible. Research also shows that automation and digital technologies need complementary help from human practitioners to function. Human staff must, for example, manage friction and perform repairs when machines fail. Automation, we have learned, is only seemingly or partly autonomous challenging initial expectations of what automation can achieve. In this session, we challenge the idea that automation simply makes human work obsolete and instead ask: who is making automation work? We show that when implementing automation, new time consuming tasks, roles and jobs of making automation work surface that are often invisible to organizational actors and decision makers

In this session, Jette Ernst and Benjamin Lipp present findings from their studies on automation in the care sector. They explore themes including the emergence of new and evolving job roles, automation as a managerial and political instrument, and the challenges and practices involved in implementing and sustaining automation in everyday work.