Robotics, automation and artificial intelligence have the power to transform the workplace for all those employed, including senior management. Today everyone, especially senior leaders, must understand this challenge, stay ahead of it and create conditions to benefit from it. This is a sea change comparable to the industrial and agricultural revolutions in scope and effect. For those in the workforce, like past societal transformations, the digital/tech revolution involves disruption and displacement, and new ways and types of working.
Using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Occupational Information Network (O*Net) data, McKinsey Global Institute analyzed automation’s potential workplace effect by examining more than 2,000 activities performed in more than 800 occupations. MGI quantified the time spent on specific activities and estimated the feasibility of automating them. Automation potential depends on technical feasibility, costs to automate relative to human wages, the availability of the skills that automation may replace, and consideration of social acceptance and regulation.
MGI’s intriguing results tell an important story about the change that senior management and the employees themselves must look for, manage and guide. MGI found that current technology allows for full automation of less than 5% of jobs, but almost every occupation faces some automation. The most automatable work involves data collection and processing, along with physical activities, particularly those found in predictable, highly structured environments. These types of automatable activities represent 51% of work time in the U.S., valued at approximately $2.7 trillion in wages. Low-skilled work is clearly affected, but so is work at all pay and skill levels. In fact, for those with annual incomes exceeding $200,000, 31% of their work time involves automatable tasks, usually data related.
We should expect continuous advancement rather than an economic tsunami, as more human work integrates technology. Obviously, employment costs will decline in many instances. Falling demand for unskilled workers, however, means rising demand for expertise needed to implement and manage technology. Many organizations will find the primary benefit of automation will not be from reduced labor costs, but from higher quality output and safety. Additionally, increases in productivity could provide more time for improved interactions with customers and other stakeholders. What’s more, the skill of the labor force in general must increase through better education. Management and education themselves have a low potential for automation.
As countless other examples show, software, digital assistants and automation permeate increasing areas of daily work activities. Jobs are redefined, career paths veer from the expected and social contracts change, not only within the organization, but in society as a whole.
To face this sea change requires a high-performing organizational culture committed to learning. The CEO and the C-suite team need to understand the challenge, set the tone and commit the resources to manage the change and develop their people. Senior leaders must create alignment on goals and direction, even while incessant change from technology forces evolution in goals and direction. Learning is key. Moreover, the management and talent development capability that the organization needs are exceptionally difficult to automate (9% potential).
The individual employees themselves must commit to learning to gain a framework to comprehend and prepare for change that technology brings, especially related to the consequences for themselves and their work. Some critical areas for development also have low automation potential: Decision-making, planning, creativity and innovation (18%). Learning that integrates these qualities with specific automation related skills, increases engagement and proactively prepares the individual and the organization for change.
We all need to be more flexible. We must continually reinvent ourselves to stay in the driver’s seat or else the unrelenting advance of technology will surely drive us, possibly to an unwelcome destination. We need courage to step back, self-assess, listen to feedback and be brutally honest about what we need to learn to face the future for our organizations and ourselves.
Stuart Levine is chairman and CEO, Stuart Levine & Associates, EduLeader LLC. He can be reached at 516-465-0800 or slevine@stuartlevine.com.
