Employee of the Month

Developing new talent is our future, but for all.

When I read the article by Greg Williams, I’d like to share my idea about Automation that I’ve been involved hundreds of projects in my professional life. And I’d like to find a solution for social effect of Automation and Robotics.

Automation-based job losses will be one of the major challenges facing the world economy in the coming years. 2017 McKinsey’s report expects that 375 million workers, 14% of the world’s workforce, change their occupational group by 2030. This may liken the transition from the agricultural model to the industrial model in the late 19th century. We can turn it into an advantage.  From knowledge economy into life economy.

The effects of technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics are hot topic nowadays. According to the article that published by German and Danish scientists in July 2019, in the companies invested in robots between 1990 and 1996, the number of employees between 1998 and 2016 increased more than 50%, and that over the same period the number of employees decreased more than% 20 in of the other companies that did not invest in robots. Interesting ha?

The World Economic Forum submits that automation will replace 75 million jobs worldwide by 2022 but 133 million new job opportunities will be created. Interesting again?

In addition, Carl Frey and Amazon think AI Assistants and the Autonomous tools are a “worker killer”.

In order to understand your job and the possibility of being affected by digitization, you need to define your process can be automated or not, And examine your process’ economic, regional and political consequences. For millions of taxi drivers, bankers and retailers around the world, it is important to move to another job that can’t be automated or move to a business segment that created by automation.

Some studies claim that the skills that enable workers to progress in their existing areas are less important than the skills that enable them to move to other industries. 

In July, Amazon claims to re-educate 30% of its 300,000 workforce and is going to spend $ 700 million for it. We will see what it results…

In the UK, employers (not the government) lead the national retraining programs. And Governance (management, communication and interaction) will be a crucial element for employees to focus on lifelong learning path, rather than to increase their skills which will be automated in near future.

According to the McKinsey report, ” despite the awareness on the problem, community has not got into action yet”.  Public spending on training and support for workers is stably diminishing in most countries.

This situation affects not only the unqualified persons, but also educated ones. Goldman Sachs had 500 people on the brokers table, now there are three. There were 700 data processing workers at a bank in Turkey. Now it is just 50 workers.

Alongside the climate change, automation is a social problem of technology. As in globalization, as we, governments, employers and workers, we all should know the possible results and then move on accordingly.

We should ask ourselves, how is welfare in the 21st century?

Batur Erdoğan