25 December 2018

Automation & Artificial Intelligence: Job Encroachment or Job Enrichment (2/2)


In my previous article, I analyzed the level of jobs in an enterprises and proposed the depth of encroachment due to automation on those levels. (You can read it here)
Now, in this post, I shall try to look at what people working on those three levels should do in order to have a steady professional career.
Case 1: Nine to five computer jobs
It’s time for people falling under this category & doing mundane routine tasks to start upskilling themselves. These people can undergo training on new skills (data analytics, digital marketing, or higher formal education etc.). From an ITIL incident management role, an L1 or Service Desk agent may try upskill to a L2 skill level etc.
Case 2: Mid Management Level
Though the knowledge & decision making skills required at this level, keeps people working at this level safe. But since many service providers are toiling hard to make AI available at this level, hence, for the people at this level, the easiest way to stay relevant is to get their senior management buy-in on their skillset (though they too should try to upgrade). Cross-functional thinking, dependency building & taking end-to-end responsibility of execution may be the initial steps to show their skill-sets to buy management trust.
Case 3: Senior Management Level
Though automation & AI has little or no prevalence here, as of today, the people at this level are the ones who make decisions on adoption of automation in their enterprises. Hence, the challenge for the people at this level is to adopt automation responsibly in their enterprises, investing not only in automation, but also in training, educating & re-skilling their employees.
From job encroachment to job enrichment
For the people at the top level, they should inculcate the thought in the minds of their employees that automation is not going to cause job encroachment but job enrichment!
It’s about a thought process in solving problems in which the two approaches (human & machine) work together by complementing each other to use the advantages that each one has, resulting in Jobs Enrichment!
The leaders at the top management should not bogged down by claims of journalists and experts, but rather think logically upon the automation of process where the two approaches can work together, rather than machines substituting humans – This is what I call the enrichment strategy.
In my opinion, we should work to change the mindset, of employees & employers to ensure a different line of thought: automation is not job encroachment, but job augmentation.
This mindset has the power to change the upcoming time!

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