No Comebacks!!

Globalisation and outsourcing shifted jobs from one place to another leveraging the cost arbitrage - but largely still needed labour. Some companies have gone through cycles of insource and outsource. 

 Robotisation and Automation will not be just a shift - it's a replace!

I have tried to address this using lessons from the past, the challenges of education, reskilling & training, the need to reduce the disparity of wealth and yes - a couple of solutions for consideration! (numbers in brackets are references below)

This whole shift and drive towards automation for efficiency, customer experience and profitability needs to be looked at carefully in the context of velocity - the pace of change - especially by governments and corporates. For two reasons

 1. It takes time to re-skill a generation

2. It takes time to refocus the educational foundations and curriculum 

And unlike Outsourcing, robotisation and automation, does not shift locations of jobs to a lower cost & skillbase - it completely replaces it. No comebacks! 

 Let me put in perspective as to why I pin the focus on velocity. 

 Example 1. 50 years is the time it took the car & tractor replaced the horse & carriage on roads and farms. In that time both education systems, awareness and infrastructure enabled a generation to adapt and adopt the change (1)

 Example 2. When Margaret Thatcher strategically shifted the UK in the 70s away from manufacturing to the services industry it took 30 years before it embedded services in it's entirety - but it was able to do so because again education systems and re-skilling were possible to do - but still entire generations still struggle today. The pace was slower. (2)

 Example 3. Contrast that with what happened in the 90s with the outsourcing of the services. That pace of change took a mere 7-10 years and displaced entire populations of skilled employees. Not even time for someone to complete high school and too late for someone to change course in either polytechnic, as an apprentice or at university.

I was running a recruitment company in the mid-2000s and found that the first role a graduate in the UK could potentially start with was a project manager! Whaaat? You come up the ranks and unfortunately there was no training ground for these young people graduating.

That's what happens with velocity. Foundations need to be reset and re-looked at. The pace of change was too fast for either corporates or governments to react or do anything. I was on a couple of committees that was brainstorming how to address the skills gap and corporates did support but the effort and change was not fast enough. 

 Sir Ken Robinson was right when he said - we don't know what's going to happen in 5 years but our education systems are still archaic! (3)

With robotisation and automation, I believe we are running at timelines that will outpace the much required change in skills and education systems. We need a different, creative way of making sure people are reskilled, educated and made aware. 

This change will happen, and must happen. I fully support it and believe we need to do it - But we as corporates and governments we have the responsibility of enabling a generation to re-skill and take care of society at large while we progress. 

 And a larger question of how should we all be adopting this change? Will it create more spirals of the change? Who benefits - ultimately? Will it create more disparity of wealth?  

And disparity of wealth is a very important element in the adoption of automation and robotisation. It will impact wealth creation of nations and of individuals. The gap has only increased between the wealthiest and poorest (4, 5, 6, 7) The IMF and World Bank refer to the Gini coefficient. ("The Gini coefficient provides an index to measure inequality," says Antonio Cabrales, a professor of economics at University College London. It is a way of comparing how distribution of income in a society compares with a similar society in which everyone earned exactly the same amount. Inequality on the Gini scale is measured between 0, where everybody is equal, and 1, where all the country's income is earned by a single person.).

Here are two Gini Coefficients for developed countries (and the rest is the same worldwide) (i) UK in 1979 was 0.26 and in 2009 was 0.40 (ii) USA in 1979 was 0.39 and in 2012 was 0.48. Just have a think!! The gap has only widened.

 The IMF report on causes for disparity and inequality of wealth (4) cites globalisation shifting towards protectionism but also states the importance of a highly skilled workforce, stronger education being a positie for reducing the gap. We need to enable citizen generations to be re-skilled and support governments to determine educational programs at school and university levels. 

Robotisation and Automation are here to stay and must happen in our journey of progress but as responsible, corporate citizens need to be mindful of the pace of change, the velocity.  We need to enable the reducing the gap in the disparity of wealth. We need to enable citizen generations to be re-skilled and support governments to determine educational programs at school and university levels. 

Robotisation and automation can help with bridging the wealth disparity gap. 

So, taking the advice I give my teams - if you state a problem, then have a few solutions (however blue sky). Here's a couple of solutions and it's focussed on 2 key axes - Education and Industry - and they are both interlinked 

The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs report makes interesting reading especially on skills. (See attached picture - a friend sent me this taken at a conference) 

 1. Education: Corporates & Government to work together at schools and universities especially at high schools to reshape the curriculum. - a body must be created to look at strengths of countries and reskill a generation starting today (there's 3.6 billion people to take care of - 1.7 billion who are in services and 1.9 billion who are too young to work)- and must build a practical way

 2. Industry: the greatest level of automation will happen in the private sector especially the large multinationals and technology companies. Training, especially, hands-on training will be critical. - a Corporate:Government central body must be created in every country or globally to ensure training programs are in place at different levels of a population - including reskilling. Corporates must cater for a larger part of this cost as they benefit the most from citizen-consumers

It's a replace - but let us replace together - mindful of populations, families and children that need to be catered to! And each of us has a role to play in influencing our corporates and our governments.  And we must - else future generations will hold us responsible as selfish & callous.

 (1) https://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/blogs/horses-horsepower-rocky-transition  (2) https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/nov/16/why-britain-doesnt-make-things-manufacturing  (3) https://www.ted.com/speakers/sir_ken_robinson  (4) https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1513.pdf  (5) https://www.newsweek.com/real-reason-growing-gap-between-rich-and-poor-377662 (6) https://www.scientificamerican.com/email-this-article/?contentid=E8B8D271-0643-4352-80D7FA20422BF969#  (7) https://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2016/01/62-people-own-same-as-half-world-says-oxfam-inequality-report-davos-world-economic-forum  (8) https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs.pdf