As technology continually improves, companies look forward to opportunities to increase efficiency and quality while cutting down on costs. At the same time, from a different perspective, employees fear losing their jobs, or even seeing entire professions cease to exist, due to the impacts of automation and artificial intelligence (AI).
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Competencies, Not Job Titles, Can Predict Obsolescence
Much of the buzz and debate over which jobs are likely to be replaced by technology focuses on the big picture—on certain jobs or industries that are vulnerable to threats from automation. It may, however, be more predictive to take a holistic, skills-based approach in considering why certain jobs are more at risk than others.
For example, rather than saying that psychotherapy is a field that is unlikely to be automated, we could get to the underlying skills involved and say, more broadly, that jobs requiring emotional competence are unlikely to be automated.
Obviously, this is a pretty nuanced skill and one that is inherently human. This is the type of skill that is simply impossible to automate with today’s technology, and it’s uncertain if, or when, it might ever lend itself to automation.
A Look Ahead
In an article for Harvard Business Review, authors Adam J. Gustein and John Sviokla identify seven skills they don’t see succumbing to the impact of automation anytime soon. In this article, we’ll look at one of those, which we mentioned above: emotional competence. In two follow-up articles, we’ll discuss the other six.
Emotional Competence
Gustein and Sviokla note that even with advances in AI products like Amazon’s Alexa, machines are still fairly primitive in their ability to understand emotion. “The most basic level of emotional competence is being able to recognize the emotions at play in the context of analysis and action,” they write. “The next level is the ability to successfully intervene in an emotionally complex situation, when people are hurt or uncertain.”
Not the sort of thing that our computers, tablets, smartphones, or Alexa devices are currently able to do!
The prospect of losings one’s job to automation is understandably frightening. And, while some jobs may be seen as more automationproof than others, it’s important to think more broadly about the types of skills that are difficult to automate. These are the skills one should strive to develop in the quest to stay relevant in an increasingly automated world.
From an L&D perspective, these are also the types of skills that should become the focus of training and development for employees, helping to prepare them for potential shifts in talent demand.