The Impact Of Tech Disruption On Jobs
As we all know there’s a natural tension between humans and technology. If the robots can replace us, what are we left to do? Deloitte Private's mid-market technology survey tackles the talent dimensions of IT investments.
The nature of work is shifting from low-value, routine tasks to higher-order analysis and invention. Through this process, private companies are enjoying myriad benefits, from increased productivity to better customer engagement to forming whole new business lines.
Rather than being left out, employees are sharing in technology’s bounty in a number of ways:
- New Jobs: Nearly half of the survey companies report plans to hire more than they did before implementing new technologies, and only a quarter think they will require fewer people.
- New Skills: The private companies say reskilling employees has the greatest impact on their e orts to technologically augment their workforce.
- New Flexibility: Companies plan to increasingly rely on “gig workers”, contract-based or non-full-time, ex-employees, to help meet their strategic goals for technology.
From May 16 to June 4, 2018, a Deloitte survey of mid-market companies was conducted by OnResearch, a market research rm. The survey examined technology trends taking place in this market segment to determine the role that technology plays and how it influences business decisions.
The 500 survey respondents represented mid-market companies with annual revenues ranging from $100 million to a little more than $1 billion. Half of the respondents were C-suite executives, while the remaining executives held other management roles.
Eighty percent of the respondents represented companies that are privately held, while the remainder were publicly traded firms.
Thirty-three percent of the respondents were from consumer and industrial products companies; 24 percent represented technology, media and telecommunications companies; the remainder were divided among energy and resources, financial services, life sciences and health care, and other industries.
In addition to taking over assembly lines, robots can now operate massive tractors to help farmers produce more crops, analyse magnetic resonance images, run online chat groups, and even give massages and flip hamburgers. In our survey, half of the respondents expect automated systems to engage with people or acquire humanlike expertise in the next one to two years.
And, yet, companies continue to need workers and cite skills shortages as a major impediment to growth. For many, technology is upping the stakes when it comes to finding and holding on to talent. Consider that in this year’s survey, 46 percent of the private company leaders say they plan to hire more people than they did before implementing new technologies, while only 26 percent say they’ll require fewer people.
With business operations viewed as the most likely area for technology-related job disruption in the coming years, survey respondents acknowledge that executives face a tough climb.
As automation becomes a decisive component in an increasing number of individual tasks within jobs, companies have to ensure they are identifying higher-value roles, and help their people make the leap to perform in new jobs.
Information security is now the top challenge the executives cite in using cloud- based services, garnering 60 percent of the responses, up from 45 percent a year ago. Managing data privacy (51 percent) and ensuring data integrity (46 percent) also rank highly.
Finally, the Internet of Things (IoT) makes one out of every five executive’s list of tech- related trends expected to have a significant impact on their business over the next 12 months. More of the respondents see IoT technologies impacting their customers (40 percent) than their employees (36 percent).
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