Automation – A Thrust to Human Limitations or a Blow to Human Abilities
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The coronavirus pandemic and the lockdowns have led the enterprises to accelerate their automation plans, with even more investments.
So, what is automation?
Well, it is about smooth management of business processes which is independent of other interventions, and helps enhance service quality and its delivery.
For most of them, automating business processes was already in the pipeline, until the pandemic happened, and put everything to halt. While managing everything, coping up with disruptions amid lockdowns, maintaining social distancing and other norms, never did they realize that automation would become the ultimate savior, and therefore, an urgent need of the hour for them.
Do you know, the cost of the pandemic is expected to cross $4 trillion, leading to the extreme pressure and a dire need of automation.
In a matter of time, the urgency will rise to a melting point, where the enterprises will have no option, but implement it for unhindered work-flow and risk mitigation, or else watch their businesses succumb to the uncertainties led by the pandemic.
Invasion by Technology to Invade Over the Pandemic Aftermaths
Technology has touched almost every aspect of our lives, especially for business enterprises. Technological innovations have been inspiring generations, enabling them to be dynamic in addressing the pandemic effects. An automation solution and robotics are today looked upon as the most robust and promising contrivances, to transform businesses irrespective of the pull-backs including the major ones like the ongoing pandemic. The fact that a robot cannot get tired or sick, both physically and emotionally is now supported by another, that it cannot be the carrier of the virus too, and that makes it a safe and much capable substitute of human resources involved in various jobs; and when there is economic downturn, the role of automation technology is going to be the key source of prevention of vulnerabilities and an assurance of growth.
According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the robotics market is expected to take a steep upturn in coming years, as represented below.
Source: MarketsandMarkets
Automation is revolutionizing businesses leading to much faster, convenient, and efficient processes to drive performance.
Automation, The Two-Edged Sword – An Analysis
Realizing the extent of their dependency on various resources, more and more companies are now looking to reduce it by automating their processes, especially the ones that are repetitive in nature. As Alan Priestley, an analyst at Gartner states, “Anywhere today that you have repetitive operations in place, those are prime things you could potentially automate to reduce your costs and become more efficient and more responsible.”
Well, this may be the most possible cause of recession period which is likely to follow the pandemic. As Maureen Fleming, an analyst at IDC states, “I haven’t talked to anyone who’s not doing automation as a way to become more competitive, and more resilient.” Though, she still believes that some organizations will get back to following their old ways of functioning, while most of it will be automated.
According to Nan Craig, a researcher at the Centre for Global Studies based in London, “The option to reduce close physical contact using automation is going to be more than tempting. It might be a matter of staying open or closing, for some businesses.” She adds, “But also the need to cut costs by closing premises and going remote, or keeping fewer workers on and distancing them more effectively, will be intense because of the economic downturn that’s going to follow this crisis.”
So, is automation a boon or a bane?
With technological intervention like that of Robots in monotonous, muddy, minacious jobs and now in our combat with COVID-19, automation business certainly qualifies as a boon. But at the same time, where the automation services and control is going to be the one way out for economies to get back to normalcy, the employment rate is also heading to touch the danger zone, which turns automation to a bane.
Whatever be it, the situation calls for the need to the creation of new jobs for replacing the old ones, as now most of the manual work will be taken over by automated infrastructure.
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Is Automation All Set to Kill Jobs? What’s Actually in Store Next?
The transformation pressure, and now to thwart the economic uncertainties led by the pandemic, automation benefits have become the prime focus for many organizations. As predicted in a recent study by Georgia State University, the transition towards automation is going to be very quick in various industries, to replace especially the low-wage jobs. The job-types at risk due to the pandemic are quite similar to those at risk by the technological invasion such as AI, in most of the industries. That’s quite logical as
The industries at highest risk of employment disruption are – Hotel & Food Industry, Entertainment Industry, Retail Industry, and Construction Industry; so much that, even when the pandemic phase passes, which no body is really sure about, the lost jobs won’t be recovered, for they will be replaced by the technology vectors, forever!
Yet blaming automation for the unemployment won’t be sensical, as that’s the transformational need for companies to grow, which is part of the business evolution. Automation may seem to killing jobs but its actually won’t be. There has to be a solution that measures up to the situation well, and that only way out to the mounting risk of lost jobs and layoffs is, training and upskilling the defenestrated workforce, so that it can be given a new entry into the circle of paid population.
The digital technology will soon be augmenting most of the sectors, like manufacturing, transportation, hotel, food, entertainment, retail, construction, and education. An innovative approach needs to adopted by the governments, to upskill and retrain the out-of-work workforce, which would prevent the job deficits and would rather transform their nature.
Predictions are Predictions, in the Nutshell!
There are lots of speculations being made on the current pandemic-struck scenario, yet, no one is certain about what’s actually there in store for future. Studies and surveys may claim to be foreseeing the jobs at ‘risk’ or elimination, owing to automation in various industries, at various levels at much faster pace due to the pandemic, yet one cannot oversee the stability and security, these jobs will come up with.
The industries cannot stay oblivious to the global economic predicament, and that makes automation or hiring automation services company, inevitable for them to consider in their infrastructure. Only time will tell, how does it shape up once the pandemic balloon deflates.
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