How to safeguard your job in era of automation

Robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning are trending topics of discussion with a lot of speculation that sooner rather than later, the robots will take over most of our jobs. What then will become of us?

I recently attended a Talent Conference that included a panel of current and former CEOs and one of the key messages that was passed on was that the field of Human Resources as it is commonly referred to will soon become obsolete. Of course, as soon as the CEOs left, other speakers most of whom were HR leaders made a point of justifying the significance of this particular career path.

I chuckled as I sat in my corner analysing human behaviour in the room which I find so fascinating. It is amazing how creative we are in coming up with theories and justifications as to why we are and must remain relevant. We must fight to exist and continuously be important or we will become victims of Darwin’s law of natural selection and disappear into oblivion!

If you act like a robot at work, you can be guaranteed that your job will be taken over by one.

In fact, even before robots became a threat to job security, those who displayed robot- like behaviours lost their jobs to fellow humans who had less robot-like behaviour! Now here is the thing. How does a robot work? Firstly, a robot needs instructions on what to do.

A clear series of commands on how to react following a certain outcome are already coded into the robot. A robot is reliable and will do exactly as it has been programmed to do unless it has some bugs which can be promptly fixed, and it will return to super efficiency. In fact, ensure that all your robots are properly secured and regularly de-bugged and your robots will not miss work because they are not feeling well. They will also be unlikely to burn out.

What then is the fate of us humans? Can we compete with these machines? The answer is No! It would be unfair to compete with them as we are by far superior. Now more than ever before, our fundamental strength is being human. Some key comparisons between humans and robots below will give you a good idea of which category you fall in;

Empathy: A human being is empathetic. This is one of the key attributes demonstrated by individuals with a high level of emotional intelligence. When you demonstrate empathy, you are attuned to people’s feelings and your leadership brings out stellar results. You also have a knack for managing upwards as you can relate and empathise with the struggles of your leader or your clients and can relate to all the pressure they are experiencing. A robot is programmed to deliver results based on the coded instructions and lacks the skill of empathy which is critical for driving teams.

Creativity and Out of the Box Problem Solving: This is a key competitive advantage for many organisations and talented human beings are able to think creatively and go against the norm. They can creatively solve a problem and think through options for making things faster, more efficient and stress free for all involved.

A robot on the other hand has a series of set commands and while some may argue that artificial intelligence is going to overcome that barrier, you cannot beat a human in terms of thinking out of the box and coming up with high quality solutions. If you frequently do your work exactly as instructed, encounter a problem and wait for your boss to come back from his two-week vacation so you can move forward with the rest of the project, you are in for a robot takeover.

Networking: Relationships are at the heart of driving business growth in our continent and this is rooted deep in our African values that emphasise on community strength and togetherness.

It is quite a task growing fast enough if you do not have the right networks to propel you forward. What about introverts? You can still effectively network as an introvert. Identify just two people you would like to connect with at a networking event and leave it at that. You will definitely be much more effective than a robot in networking and I don’t mean networking from an application development perspective!

Agility: In this fast-changing world, you need to be very agile in terms of making decisions and changing them, re-steering yourself or your business in a new direction if need be. This is a key competitive advantage for businesses that have this as a strength. The quality of agility means that the humans in the business have the ability to make quick decisions, change their minds and go in a different direction fast enough if things are not working out as earlier anticipated.

A robot waits for instructions that have been given prior and would therefore be lost if a totally different command that it had not been programmed to respond to is given. This would translate to time lost!

Are you a human robot? If you are, then it means you need to challenge yourself and let your human self be in the forefront. You otherwise have a real risk of your skills becoming obsolete given robots can do what you can do and probably more.

We don’t have the luxury to be intellectually or emotionally lazy anymore because businesses have too many options. You could easily be replaced by an actual robot, or a fellow human robot who is more efficient than you are. Most likely though you will be replaced by an amazing human!

Njoki Karungu-Karuga, Director, Talent and Organisation Design, mSurvey.