A study conducted by World Economic Forum called 'Future of Jobs', estimated that five million jobs will be lost to automation before 2020. This includes jobs lost to artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology and other developments that may eliminate the need for a human workforce in some aspects of businesses.Cut to another study, conducted by US-based ADP, which surveyed Indian employees, that found nearly 63% of the sampled population expected that automation would take over jobs of people doing process-based work, repetitive work, an Economic Times report said. Employees in India, and China, are more likely than workers in Australia and Singapore believe that trends will impact them," John Antos, VP Marketing, APAC for ADP was quoted as saying in the ET report. The survey was conducted on employees across North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific.
Indian employers have already raised red flags about automation, indicating that their workforce could be trimmed down in the future to make way for new technology, to increase efficiency and productivity, and cut cost.
According to Mohandas Pai, 10% of incremental jobs in the IT sector will be lost to automation every year while half of middle-level managers will face the brunt of artificial intelligence. A recent study -- Now or Never: India CEO Outlook 2016 -- conducted by KPMG India, found that nearly 60% Indian CEOs surveyed believed that automation would replace 5% of their manpower in the next three years.
Fabric and clothing brand Raymond recently said that it was on its way to replace 10,000 of its employees with robots over the next three years, according to an article in Trax.in. This makes up for 33% of its 30,000-strong workforce in the country.
"Through technological intervention we are looking to scale down the number of jobs to 20,000, through multiple initiatives in technology. One robot could replace around 100 workers. While it is happening in China at present, it will also happen in India,” Raymond's CEO Sanjay Behl was quoted as saying in the report.
Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, however, tried to allay concerns earlier this year by saying that it should not be a huge worry since jobs have been taken away by automation right from the time of the industrial revolution, only to produce new opportunities.
It should be noted that in FY16 alone, Infosys let off 4,000 full-time employees, according to another ET report, thanks to automation.
HCL Tech CEO Anant Gupta called it temporary maladjustment, in a blog penned by him. "The Industrial Revolution too was met with technological unemployment as a temporary phase of maladjustment," he wrote.
The World Economic Forum, however, says that there are two skills in particular, which can save you from losing your job to robots.
The WEF report said that while automation will take several million jobs away, it is also likely to create nearly 2.1 million new ones especially in specialized areas like computing, mathematics, architecture and engineering.
The upgrading of skills and re-skilling then becomes mandatory for employees at every level. “Without urgent and targeted action today, to manage the near-term transition and build a workforce with future-proof skills, governments will have to cope with ever-growing unemployment and inequality, and businesses with a shrinking consumer base,” said Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of WEF said.
David Deming, associate professor of education and economics at Harvard University, says to save your jobs, mathematical ability will be enormously beneficial. Mostly, Deming notes, in the recent times, jobs requiring mathematical abilities, like bank tellers, statistical clerks, have been automated, the report says. So employees with higher maths skills or those who can successfully upgrade or re-skill themselves, will be better poised to hold their jobs going ahead.
http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report-these-two-skills-can-help-from-losing-your-job-to-automation-2255949
Comments
Post a Comment