Research from the Boston Consultancy Group, Oxford University and Deloitte have predicted that huge swathes of jobs from accounting to manufacturing will be lost to robots in the near future. However, I do not think that we all need to worry about losing our jobs. It will be us that will differentiate business in the coming decades and here is how.
- People Become a Premium
It is easy to forget that no matter the industry, those at the end of the sales funnel are human. Technology constantly re-values skills and you should expect colleagues, customers, clients and partners to place an increased premium on the quality, relevance and insightfulness of human engagement in the future. Your competitors can replicate technology, but they can’t replicate humans. Robots aren’t a threat, they would just free up more time and increase our capacity and productivity – ultimately, allowing businesses to focus on the human side of what they do.
- You Can’t Build Rapport with a Robot
What robot can motivate a workforce, bank goodwill, return a favor or build a relationship with qualities that enable a business to run smoothly? It is these meaningful relationships and personal interactions that make employees or clients go the extra mile for one another. We have to realize how important soft skills are to success. They are vital in a world where people do business with people.
- Innovation Can’t be Programmed
The battle for innovation has never been more fierce in today’s corporate world. In order to be truly innovative, collaboration, idea sharing and creativity are required. These moments usually happen unplanned or when you join a meeting that you weren’t scheduled to attend. It is these moments that lead to one business standing out from their competitors.
- Human Instinct Should be Trusted
Something else that cannot be coded is natural intuition. While technology can execute strategy, planning is left to us. Think about when a client asks your consultants to recommend candidates for roles. Experience, qualifications and expertise as well as how the candidate’s skills and personalities would compliment the existing team are all assessed. Ultimately, you can’t program a culture that has that element of “gut” to it.
There is no doubt that at least some of the jobs that exist today will be carried out by robots in the near future. I think that we should embrace that because that means that people and their unique skills are going to become more valuable. We will need a lot of human skill and intuition to be able to leverage this technology to drive productivity into our businesses.
Advisor Abbate 