The digital age is in full swing and industry leaders are forecasting a severe disruption in the white collar workforce at the hands of blossoming technology.
As reported by WTVR, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published a report in late January that showcased how the digital age is revolutionizing technology while simultaneously putting millions of jobs at risk.
The WEF estimates that five million jobs, spanning the world’s leading economies, will be compromised by 2020. They expect administrative and white-collar jobs to be most at risk.
The significant shift is in part due to significant technological advancements and strides made in the realms of artificial intelligence, robotics, and biotechnology. Automation is expected to be responsible for making a human workforce unnecessary within certain industries.
A recent international study found that there are several factors that have a direct correlation to employee productivity (spacial arrangements, furniture, noise, lighting, and temperature). In other words, human productivity can be altered based on the environment they’re working in. With automated machines, this no longer becomes an issue.
A survey of senior executives from over 350 of the biggest companies throughout 15 of the most powerful economies found that automation could be responsible for the lost of 7.1 million jobs, though new opportunities within the tech field will provide an offset of 2.1 million jobs.
“Artificial intelligence and machine learning [are] expected to lead to negative employment outcomes [across] Education and Training, Legal and Business and Financial Operations. [But] our respondents do not believe that these technologies will have advanced significantly enough by the year 2020 to have a more widespread impact on global employment levels,” the report says.
Another contributing aspect of a complete technology overhaul within the workforce is the rapid rate of technological advancements within many industries. At such a fast pace, companies and business owners are finding it hard to keep up.
According to Fast Company, the WEF report urges employers and business owners to proactively act on this notion by training their current workforce to stay up-to-date with technology rather than waiting for the next wave of employees to show up with the knowledge in hand.
On the bright side, HR managers are expecting a large influx of data analysis jobs. These opportunities will present themselves in direct correlation with an increase in technology in the workforce because the data calculated and reported by the machines will need to be translated and analyzed by humans.
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