- The World Economic Forum Report reveals that 85m jobs could be displaced by robots.
- Companies estimate that around 40% of workers will require reskilling of six months or less
- 94% of business leaders expect employees to pick up new skills on the job, a sharp uptake from 65% in 2018.
Dubai: About 85 million jobs could be displaced over the next five years by robots by a shift in the division of labour between humans and machines, a World Economic Forum (WEF) survey revealed.
According to “The Future of Jobs Report 2020” by the Geneva-based body, 97 million new jobs may emerge that are more adapted to the new division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms.
The tasks where humans are expected to retain their comparative advantage include managing, advising, decision-making, reasoning, communicating and interacting.
Saadia Zahidi, Member of the Managing Board at WEF, said that the adoption of cloud computing, big data and e-commerce remain high priorities for business leaders, following a trend established in previous years.
However, she said that there has also been a significant rise in interest for encryption, nonhumanoid robots and artificial intelligence.
Comparing the impact of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 on individuals with lower education levels on the impact of the Covid-19 crisis, the impact today is far more significant and more likely to deepen existing inequalities.
Technology integration
Surveys of nearly 300 global companies found four out of five business executives were accelerating plans to digitise work and deploy new technologies, undoing employment gains made since the financial crisis of 2007-2008.
The survey showed that 43 per cent of businesses indicated that they are set to reduce their workforce due to technology integration while 41 per cent plan to expand their use of contractors for task-specialised work, and 34 per cent plan to expand their workforce due to technology integration.
By 2025, the time spent on current tasks at work by humans and machines will be equal.
“A significant share of companies also expects to make changes to locations, their value chains, and the size of their workforce due to factors beyond technology in the next five years,” Zahidi said.
Employers expect that by 2025, increasingly redundant roles will decline from being 15.4 per cent of the workforce to 9 per cent (6.4 per cent decline) and that emerging professions will grow from 7.8 per cent to 13.5 per cent (5.7 per cent growth) of the total employee base of company respondents.
The top skills and skill groups which employers see as rising in prominence in the lead up to 2025 include groups such as critical thinking and analysis as well as problem-solving, and skills in self-management such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility.
On average, companies estimate that around 40 per cent of workers will require reskilling of six months or less and 94 per cent of business leaders report that they expect employees to pick up new skills on the job, a sharp uptake from 65 per cent in 2018.
Reskilling and upskilling
The survey showed that 84 per cent of employers are set to rapidly digitalise working processes, including a significant expansion of remote work—with the potential to move 44 per cent of their workforce to operate remotely.
To address concerns about productivity and well-being, about one-third of all employers expect to also take steps to create a sense of community, connection and belonging among employees through digital tools, and to tackle the well-being challenges posed by the shift to remote work.
For those workers set to remain in their roles, the share of core skills that will change in the next five years is 40 per cent, and 50 per cent of all employees will need reskilling.
An average of 66 per cent of employers surveyed expects to get a return on investment in upskilling and reskilling within one year.
However, this time horizon risks being too long for many employers in the context of the current economic shock, and nearly 17 per cent remain uncertain on having any return on their investment. On average, employers expect to offer reskilling and upskilling to just over 70 per cent of their employees by 2025.
The report said that companies hope to internally redeploy nearly 50 per cent of workers displaced by technological automation and augmentation, as opposed to making wider use of layoffs and automation-based labour savings as a core workforce strategy.
Public sector needs to play a key role
Currently, only 21 per cent of businesses report being able to make use of public funds to support their employees through reskilling and upskilling.
The public sector will need to create incentives for investments in the markets and jobs of tomorrow; provide stronger safety nets for displaced workers amid job transitions, and to decisively tackle long-delayed improvements to education and training systems.
Additionally, it will be important for governments to consider the longer-term labour market implications of maintaining, withdrawing or partly continuing the strong Covid-19 crisis support they are providing to support wages and maintain jobs in most advanced economies.
Among the business leaders surveyed, just over 80 per cent report that they are accelerating the automation of their work processes and expanding their use of remote work.
A significant 50 per cent also indicate that they are set to accelerate the automation of jobs in their companies.
In addition, more than one-quarter of employers expect to temporarily reduce their workforce, and one in five expect to permanently do so.
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