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The rise of the robots means a shift in skills


BY DAVID TOMALIN Hearing aid: Guy and Alex of C Seeker


Have you heard about E-spark?


When two deaf brothers found that, as students, it was harder than it should have been to get help with communicating, they decided to do something about it. Guy and Alex Orlov set up CSeeker


to support deaf students, and in just two years it has clocked up an annual turnover of £250k. The business has been backed by


the UK-wide Entrepreneurial Spark programme, run in partnership with NatWest and the Royal Bank of Scotland. CSeeker was among the first intake of enterprises to join the scheme in Birmingham, where Guy and Alex now live. Chosen businesses receive


mentoring, financial advice, office space in the RBS building in St Philip’s Square in the city centre. Guy said: “While huge strides have


been made in terms of provision for deaf people in this country, there is still much that needs to be done. “We’re so grateful to the


Entrepreneurial Spark scheme and everyone who has helped us along the way. In particular, David Tomalin of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce has been very helpful.” Chamber Skills Hub manager


David Tomalin said: “Guy and Alex are members of the Birmingham Hatchery of Entrepreneurial Spark, the world’s largest free business accelerator for early stage and growing ventures. “The aim of E-Spark is to develop


entrepreneurs who have a #GoDo attitude with a solid grasp of how to create value which makes them investable.”


48 CHAMBERLINK May 2016


In his 1995 book “The End of Work,” Jeremy Rifkin predicted the end of mass factory labour by 2025. Increasingly robots can replace workers, even highly skilled professionals. A recent tour of the production line operations at Jaguar Land Rover’s facility at Castle Bromwich would sway me to believe that this is fast becoming a reality. However, my visit was to attend


a workshop aimed at addressing the issues surrounding skills development in the area of Robotics. Part of the workshop was a presentation about developments in robotics, including the development of cobots (collaborative robots.) Robots are considered to be


‘Who programmes the robots? Who maintains them? Who will fix them when they go wrong?’


dangerous to humans and have to be enclosed in safe working environments (cells) in order that we do not get in their way and they do not become harmful to our health and safety. Cobots on the other hand are able to work outside of cells and safely with human operations staff, as they have been developed ever further with the use of sensors that detect a human touch and instantly stop the robot, ensuring safe operations. Robotics or automation is not a new phenomenon. New


technologies have frequently and rapidly changed the shape and profile of the labour market throughout the 20th Century. It has always been assumed that this automation would always be at the expense of jobs in the short-term, others argue that indirect effects of increased productivity through automation may include increased demand. I would also posit that it also opens up whole new areas of skills need and skills development. For example, who programmes the robots? Who maintains them? Who will fix them when they go wrong? Perhaps the more pertinent question is not how the increase in automation will affect the total demand for labour, but how it will affect the demand for different skills profiles. Computerisation can replace cognitive and manual tasks which are


reducible to a series of basic rules and instructions, such as accounting, data processing and administration. Any consequent rise in productivity may actually help to complement workers who are dealing with complex communication or problem solving tasks. Frey and Osborne (2013) have estimated the likelihood of current


jobs that may be automated in the next two decades in the US. Top of the list is telephone salespeople. This appears to be rather at odds with the perception that roles that heavily require a high level of people skills would carry little risk of imminent automation. However, artificial intelligence has already reached a level where it could replace, if only partially, some highly skilled white collar roles. The future would seem to deliver a picture of rapidly declining manual


and repetitive tasks, so we need to ensure our young people start to equip themselves for the skills of the future, for our workforces will need to support the rise of the robot and cobot. For people who may be impacted by automation we need to have coherent strategies to re- educate and reskill them for opportunities that support these changes.


SOURCES Rifkin, J. (1995). The End of Work. The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era. Kirkwood, NY: Putnam Publishing Group.


Frey, C.B. & M.A. Osborne (2013). The Future of Unemployment. How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerization? Oxford: Oxford Martin Publication.


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