How Does Automation Affect Worker Productivity?

Oct 2025

Automation continues to reshape the workforce, but how does it specifically impact productivity through specialization? In a field experiment conducted by Jie Gong and I.P.L. Png (2024), supermarket cashiers in Singapore were studied to understand the effects of automation on task specialization and productivity.

Typically, supermarket cashiers perform two primary tasks: scanning customers' purchases and collecting payments. Gong and Png studied several outlets of a supermarket that had been partly converted to a new scan-only checkout format. In the new format, cashiers specialized in scanning whereas customers made payment at self-service kiosks. The experiment involved rotating cashiers between conventional counters, where they performed both tasks, and scan-only counters, where they focused solely on scanning. By comparing their productivity across these settings, the researchers isolated the impact of automation-enabled specialization.

The results were significant: cashiers increased their scanning productivity by over 10 percent when relieved from the payment tasks. Detailed analysis revealed that this productivity improvement was not attributable to customer sorting (the possibility that different types of customers selected different counters) or to cashiers learning to perform tasks more efficiently over time. Instead, the primary factor driving this improvement was the reduction in the cognitive and physical effort associated with multitasking. Specifically, the cognitive load of frequently switching between scanning and processing payments imposed additional effort costs, slowing overall productivity.

The study also found that productivity gains were particularly pronounced among cashiers who were initially slower at conventional counters. These cashiers experienced greater relative improvement when allowed to specialize, implying that automation benefited workers disproportionately who faced higher multitasking burdens.

Overall, this research demonstrates that automation not only substitutes machines for human labor but also significantly enhances human productivity by reducing the effort costs associated with multitasking. However, the authors caution that the broader implications of automation, including increased energy consumption, potential impacts on employment, and socioeconomic inequalities, must be carefully considered.

— Summarized by Jingyuan Guo

Reference:

Gong, Jie, and Ivan PL Png. "Automation Enables Specialization: Field Evidence." Management Science 70.3 (2024): 1580-1595, https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4760