Technology is dramatically changing manyaspects of our lives — including how we work. Many organizationsand industries are looking to automate tasks or entire positions,which can make technology seem threatening for workers. A newreport from WorkMarket looks at different attitudes towardautomation and examines how this trend could change the businessworld.

For one thing, there's a notable difference between employersand employees when it comes to views on automation. More than halfof business leaders (52%) are interested in automating some part oftheir workforce, while one-third of employees described themselvesas indifferent.

IT is one of the areas where automation is likely to have thebiggest impact. Almost half of business leaders (43%) and nearly athird of employees (29%) cited IT and technology issues as thetasks that most often distract them from their work. AfterIT/technology, the tasks listed as keeping employees from focusingon more important aspects of their job include scheduling meetings,expense management, assigning work to eternal contributors,processing raw data, time entry, and billing/accounting tasks. Thereport found that these types of tasks are also often easilyautomated, and have the potential to give people more time back intheir work day.