The Rise Of The Robots

It is hard to get our daily dosage of news without seeing robots getting a mention, who appear to be making inroads into every human activity. Human resource professionals have to prepare for this new order on three counts.

- Gautam Brahma

Dealing with the fact that people are likely to be replaced by robots.

Dealing with issues faced by people when working alongside robots. 

Dealing with the possibility of robots running HR.

A 2014 report from Deloitte, UK, had predicted that 35% of all jobs in that country carried a high risk of being automated in two decades. This is a scary number. The prescription offered by the authors for displaced workers was to train them to do more customer facing jobs, or use them to generate newer ideas for business. There are two obvious challenges for HR here. One, there may not those many new roles of the type envisaged, and, two, people hired and trained for one set of skills may not be amenable to training in an altogether different bundle of skills. The second of these challenges is compounded by another finding in the same report that low income jobs comprise a disproportionate share of the jobs expected to be lost. The prospect of training people with lowgrade qualifications so that they can occupy higher-paying skilled jobs that are safe from automation is indeed daunting.