Thursday, October 23, 2014

Robots in the Workplace and the Displaced Worker

After reading the article by Andy Mukherjee about how robots may threaten many jobs currently held by humans, I had to chuckle. While teaching my Technology and Society course at Baker College just the other day, we had this very conversation. We talked about how my teenage daughter, who works at Mc Donald's, should be thankful Mc Donald's still offers jobs to humans. In all reality, her job, taking orders, surely could be handled by a touch screen computer or tablet, the fries could be made with a robotic arm and packed into bags on an assembly line and even the grill area could be managed with less human interface.

Will this happen someday, I would think it makes perfect sense, will this displace workers, yes, short term. However, technology is not a threat to society, and just as it displaces one group, it empowers another group. Society and more specifically humans, need to adapt to the coming age and being left behind is not going to be the fault of a robot.

In the age of Youtube where you can literally self educate yourself on just about anything, where you can sit in our Stanford University classes for free, where information sharing is in an instant, humans need to prepare for the coming age.

K-12 institutions must educate students in resourcefulness, critical thinking and get career and tech classes back into our schools- immediately! As someone whose career is build around educating people for new careers as an Adjunct Professor, and then helping people find those new careers in my role as Regional Sales and Marketing Director for Qualified Staffing, the skill shortage is frightening to say the least.

Not everyone should and can go to college- yes, I said it! College is right for many, but so are 2 year associates degrees or HS Career and Tech certification programs that allow students to graduate HS and enter the workforce in a skilled labor positions. Not sure if you heard the news, but there is a real shortage in skilled labor market which is the fault of legislatures and the Department of Education who dictate standards and testing. K-12 Systems who instead of equipping students for the future they are teaching to the "test" and pushing everyone toward 4 year college degree's and debt so they can be ranked highly effective is flawed. We judge our schools based on how many kids graduate, head to college, and by what their test scores say.

Wrong! How about we judge our schools based on how many students become productive members of society and measure that by standards of economic freedom, empowerment, the ability to find work and support themselves or their families in a meaningfully way.

Well, robots may end up taking many jobs away from people in the future but educators, and every day people can see the change on the horizon and need to work on equipping themselves now with new skills  to adapt to the changing world. We know this is coming so no more excuses, lets start getting people trained and ready.

To learn more about how you can prepare, contact me today for a free consultation. Kpotter@q-staffing.com. #klpotter2 #jobmarket #technologynews #andymukherjee70

Story on Robots: http://www.breakingviews.com/robots-may-spell-control-alt-delete-for-workers/21169001.article

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