Dr Roze Phillips, Postgraduate Diploma in Futures Studies alumnus from USB and Managing Director for Accenture Consulting in Africa says that the country needs to act now to ensure that humans and machines can work together in the future. Dr Philips presented a Leader’s Angle on Monday, 16 April.

“Our research shows that if South Africa can double the pace at which its workforce acquires skills relevant for human-machine collaboration, it can reduce the number of jobs at risk from 3.5 million (20%) in 2025 to just 2.5 million.”

“With the threat of automation growing, South Africa is less prepared than other countries and needs to give its workforce skills to participate in the digital economy. In a country with a staggering 27.7% unemployment and jobless youths making up 75% of unemployment, the future looks bleak.”

Dr Phillips says job transition is not new. In the pursuit of higher productivity at lower cost options, jobs have for many years been shed.

“In recent times, many manufacturing and standard business process intensive jobs were outsourced to countries where labour was cheaper. Those jobs rarely made it back to home soil but at least outsource recipient countries benefitted from the employment opportunities created there. Today, the same phenomenon occurs. But now, the search for labour arbitrage is no longer between physical geographies; today, jobs are lost to the digital world and will, in all probability, never be done by humans again.”

She says that in a country like South Africa where poverty remains, rates of unemployment are high and social security questionable, it’s vital for the country to upskill its people to collaborate with machines to enhance their own productivity, not job losses.

“Machines do not consume things and whilst they can replace human work, they do not drive purchasing behaviour or contribute to GDP. Society will regress if humans can’t work, earn and spend. South Africa needs to learn how to ‘run with machines’.”

Which jobs in South Africa are the most at risk?

Book keeping, accounting and auditing clerks have the highest risk of automation says Dr Phillips. It’s not just manual labour jobs.

Her company Accenture researched various job categories drawn from Stats SA to gain insight into human-like (analytical, leadership, social intelligence, creative) and machine-like activities (routine work, transactions, manual labour) taking into account the type of work, skills and tasks, the recent skills evolution in jobs, degree of work automation, work supply demographics and productive structure.

“The results clearly show that occupations that allocate more time to human-like activities have a lower probability of automation while workers involved in occupations such as production, office administration, tellers, cashiers, farming, food preparation, accounting, auditing, insurance claims and policing processing clerks, construction, mining, transportation, installation and maintenance are at highest risk.”

Both white- and blue-collar jobs are at risk. The more predictable and repetitive the activities that make up the tasks, the more likely it is to be replicated by machines or automated. The safest jobs are those that require influencing and advising people, teaching, programming, real-time discussions, negotiating and cooperating with co-workers.

Dr Phillips says that although the research seems to paint a gloomy picture, the opportunity for South Africa is considerable.

“Digital technology will usher in a new economic era, exposing new sources of value and growth, increasing efficiency and driving competitiveness. For South Africa to rise to the challenge the country needs to recalibrate its economy and its workforce for digital, creating entirely new products, services and markets. And the time to do that is now.”

What leaders need to do today for tomorrow

Leaders will have the opportunity to reshape their organisations and society at large for the better if they accelerate reskilling people. But it needs to happen at an accelerated speed.

Prioritize skills for development

Selecting skills training will depend on the type of machine intelligence automation being used, as well as the size, sector and existing skills levels of an organisation. Accenture has developed a guideline which organisations can access to assist them in this process.

Reskill at the top of the house

Businesses need new leadership skills to lead that are responsive, responsible and response-able. By engaging with employees and stakeholders, cross-collaboration with other industry experts such as academics, businesses and create learning opportunities for their staff to seamlessly join them on the journey.

Keep building on what you have

Rapid reskilling can ensure that you keep your workforce but constantly change the way they do their jobs with innovative learning methods, enhancing digital capabilities to meet the challenging expectations of clients, service delivery and production.

Change the mindset of ‘learning as a way of life’

Shifting from point-specific training to lifelong learning makes workers and organisations nimbler and organisations more adaptable to volatile markets.

Use digital to learn digital

Digital learning methods such as virtual reality and augmented reality technology can provide realistic simulations to help workers master new tasks so they can work with smart machinery. The same technology can be used to help reinforce correct procedures on the shop floor, monitoring how employees execute tasks and coaching them to do it the best way.

Create a more flexible workforce model

Rigid, formal job structures do not support the speed and agility demands needed in the face of digital innovation. Redefining and co-creating employment opportunities through more responsive role-based and gig-like work is a reality. These opportunities need to be available to both full-timers and freelancers.