Has the fear of robots displacing workers returned?

This was a headline this morning in ‘The Economist’.

The article then tempers the headline somewhat saying:

“But do not expect tech-induced lay-offs just yet”.

I agree small & medium enterprises won’t go down this route, as its expensive technology to implement, and the savings for smaller operations won’t justify the investment.

But I’m not so sure this is the case for large enterprises, and here’s why…

This pandemic has been tough for most organisations (no matter the size), although for me, it’s the large enterprises with high cost bases, who could suffer the most.

If you can’t sell more stuff. The only way to survive. Is to quickly reduce overheads. Unfortunately, the quickest & most lucrative way to do this, is to drastically reduce employee numbers.

We’ve already started to see large enterprises making massive redundancies.

Don’t think it was a surprise when BA, Virgin Atlantic & Ryanair announced redundancies.

But now you’re seeing the likes of Currys PC World, Boots, John Lewis, BP, British Gas owner Centrica & even builders merchant Travis Perkins doing the same. It’s going to affect most sectors.

Here in-lies the problem…

These job cuts aren’t just customer facing roles, they’re back office support roles, technical roles, and warehouse positions too. It’s across the board.

How do you think these large enterprises are still going to provide an acceptable level of service?

Yes. Investment in systems & software.

Systems to make it easier to buy products online and to support products remotely, together with further warehouse robotics.

Software (AI) to provide workflow and automation processes to cut out the need for human interaction from order placement, through to manufacturing, picking & invoicing.

Be warned. The next time you ring Curry’s PC World to complain, you might well be complaining to AI robots.

Here in-lies an opportunity…

With large enterprises reducing employee numbers & automating everything. Small organisations can steal a march, by keeping things human & real.

When it comes to office technology solutions, people buy from people they can trust to provide Simple Honest Service. Not from AI robots.

…we’ll be keeping the human touch. Will you?