Robotization In The Workplace

Robotisation will play an increasing role in the workplace, assisting human employees with their tasks. Naturally, there is an increasing concern from employees, trade unions and policy makers that unemployment will raise as smart robots replace them, as economist Richard Freeman argues that robots can be a substitute for workers, even highly skilled professionals. Fourth Industrial Revolution refers to the transformation in the way humans and machines connect and relate. The first three industrial revolutions were underpinned by steam engines, mass production and electricity, and information technology. The fourth revolution is in its early stage, it brings machine intelligence together with all other digital technologies that have become

But it also has created new opportunities for human employment, at an even a faster rate. This time, things may be very different – especially as the Internet of Things takes the human factor out of so many transactions and decisions.

There are some mainstream technologists and economists questioning whether the historical pattern will hold – whether technology will create more roles than it will eliminate and whether the jobs it creates will be higher value. The “Second Economy” (the term used by economist Brian Arthur to describe the portion of the economy where computers transact business only with other computers) is upon us. It is, quite simply, the virtual economy, and one of its main byproducts is the replacement of workers with Robots powered by sophisticated code.

Arthur speculates that in a little more than ten years, 2030, this Second Economy may be as large as the original “first” economy was in 1995 – about $7.6 trillion. If the Second Economy does achieve that rate of growth, it will be creating a workplace of humans and robots. If the robots and smart machines of the Second Economy are capable of doing

This pragmatic take is a quite different proposition for HR. The challenge principally stops being one of working out which jobs should be replaced and how to manage job losses. Instead it becomes more of an opportunity – a chance to work out how technology might augment employees’ day-to-day activities and what kinds of new job descriptions might be created. So one of the things HRs has to do is build protocols around the way people use technology and give them time to do what humans do best; which is thinking and be