In 2013, CNBC found that 65 percent of Americans believed automation would have a drastic negative impact on several industries. However, a recent post from ZDNet.com found that only 9 percent of American jobs would be replaced in some form or fashion by automation. But, that doesn’t mean the workforce in the United States and around the world hasn’t been impacted by automation.
“We believe that customer demand will deliver an automation tipping point in 2018,” the ZDNet report said. “While reticence over workforce impact will remain, the age of the customer requires dramatically speeding up the revolution.”
Experts with Forrester Research predict 2018 will be a tipping point for automation in the workplace:
- A political backlash will briefly impede automation — and fail.? As people become more and more engaged with customer service automation like kiosks and robots, there will be hesitation and, in some cases, resentment over change. However, enterprises and political organizations will reexamine change management procedures and reorient PR to navigate these waters. Automation will eventually win out because its societal and economic benefit will outweigh political resistance.
- Robotic process automation (RPA) will reshape the workforce.? As enterprises become more acclimated with automation, RPA will take over low-value repetitive tasks and rote work. In 2018, RPA-based digital workers (i.e., bots) will replace and/or augment 311,000 office and administrative positions and 260,000 sales and related jobs to deliver enhanced customer experiences. Digital transformation spending will increasingly emphasize automation, and operating models will be re-engineered around it.
- Robots will ease your burdens — if you reskill properly.? Automation will let security pros shift from reaction to intent, compliance to handing commodity tasks off to friendly robotic staff, and infrastructure and operations professionals to keeping their hair running software-defined workloads. To manage this, all professionals much become more attuned to code and development (the lingua franca of modern automation). Those who do not risk being automated out of their jobs.
The point here is that automation is here to stay and manufacturers are starting to take notice (if they haven’t already). One company that understands the role automation has, and will have, in our workplace is Automate America.
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