Predicting the unpredictable

By Dr Alan Bourne, CEO & Founder, Sova

Radical changes in the world of work are not a new phenomenon. In 1841, more than one fifth of British workers were employed in agriculture. Today, thanks to advances in farm machinery, pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers, that figure has fallen to below one in a hundred.

It may be tempting, then, to dismiss the latest upheavals caused by automation in the workplace as simply more of the same. Yes, digital transformation is affecting us in ways that are increasingly hard to ignore, whether it’s Sophia the robot delivering a speech to the United Nations or companies using complex algorithms to drive customer service interactions online. Yes, there will almost certainly be structural changes in the world of employment, with research by the World Economic Forum (The Future of Jobs Report: Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution) indicating that more than 30% of existing jobs will disappear by 2025. But aren’t these just the most recent iterations of a process that has been unfolding since the invention of the wheel?

The short answer to this question is ‘no’. Two factors that separate the changing nature of today’s employment world from that of everything that has gone before are: first, the rapidity with which the changes are happening; and, second, the ubiquity of their effect, with virtually no sector remaining untouched by digitisation’s transformative power. Understand how technology and humans work alongside each other is a fundamental question.