*By Christiane Marie Menezes Rodrigues, professor at Saint Paul Business School.
Globally, companies, governments and society make predictions about the future of work linked to automation, which is increasingly present in our daily lives, and, consequently, which professions will be maintained, which will cease to exist and, most importantly, which new occupations will be created. Preparing predictions and scenarios is not an easy task, but based on research developed by consulting firms, government agencies and universities, we have identified drivers regarding the transformations that will affect the workforce:
Automation technologies, including artificial intelligence, AI, and robotics, generate benefits for businesses and the economy by increasing productivity. There is much debate about whether the adoption of these technologies will lead to layoffs. We know that 60% of current jobs involve at least 30% of repetitive activities that could be automated. However, at the same time, AI and robotics can create new job opportunities, as developers, programmers, engineers, and specialists will hungary whatsapp data be needed to develop new technologies;
A survey conducted by the McKinsey consultancy in 2018 in 46 countries indicates that up to 1/3 of the work activities currently practiced will cease to exist by 2030. This proportion varies in each country, with developed countries being more impacted by automation than developing countries, reflecting greater incentives for the automation process;
In this same research, a scenario was developed that by 2030, 75 to 375 million workers (approximately 14% of the total workforce) will have to change their occupation segment. In addition, all workers will have to adapt to the introduction of automation in their respective activities. For several sectors, it will be necessary for workers to improve their social, emotional, creative skills or even higher-level cognitive abilities, as these capabilities are much more difficult to automate;
To achieve the required levels of product quality and policy development, for example, business leaders will need to embrace the benefits of automation while also guiding the transition of their workforce to new technologies. Skills training is essential as it will increase market dynamism and enable worker redeployment. These changes will challenge traditional education models, workforce training models, and new business approaches to skills development. Another priority is to rethink and strengthen the transition process and revenue support for workers in the transition to automation.
Therefore, due to the factors previously mentioned, for almost all occupations, we expect that several activities currently performed by humans will be performed by machines and/or software. By 2030, we expect that workers of the future will spend more time and dedication on activities that require interaction with other stakeholders and people management, and less time on predictable physical activities, data collection, and data processing, since machines perform better than humans in these activities. In short, we expect workers' activities to focus on human interaction and unpredictable environments/situations, where the application of specific knowledge is required.
We understand that it is increasingly necessary for the workforce to develop social and emotional skills, as well as advanced cognitive abilities, such as logical reasoning, for example. Thus, we have a challenge for education, training and capacity mapping models that generally do not emphasize “soft skills” as much as emotional reasoning. Other occupations will also require a higher level of performance that will be achieved with other skills. For example, machines will be able to develop activities based on basic levels of information and understanding of natural language. In emerging countries, a retail salesperson spends 20% of their time at work developing activities that can be automated. Mechanical aspects of work such as processing transactions and searching for product information can also be automated. In this sense, retail employees will be able to focus more on serving people, for example, greeting customers, answering questions and suggesting new products than on repetitive activities such as organizing stocks.