In Deloitte’s 2017 paper “Managing the Digital Workforce” they talk about various aspects of the digital workforce. They start by explaining the three evolutions of the digital workforce:

 

1. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

2. Cognitive Computing

3. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

 

RPA is the most widely used evolution of the digital workforce currently used in business and can be found almost everywhere you look. It includes things like automated stocktaking, cloud computing, virtual customer assistants and any other simple programmable tasks carried out by a computer that is limited by the inputs (coding) specified by the person who created the program.

 

Cognitive computing moves beyond the capabilities of RPA and instils the concept of human thought processes in a computer model. Cognitive computing has also already been widely adopted in everyday use with things like predictive text on your phone, live traffic on Google maps, digital assistants, speech recognition, robots, etc.

 

AI is something that, in its most pure form, does not yet exist. AI refers to a machine that is flexible and perceptive of its environment and is able to select actions that have the highest possible chance of success without human input. In essence, a computer that has achieved human like problem solving in a specific area/field.

 

To see more examples of machines and processes that makes use of these three evolutions this is a photo from Deloitte’s paper that lists some aspects of the digital workforce and which category they fall under.

 

The next section of Deloitte’s paper that is important to focus on is some of the risks that come with an automated workforce. For the sake of this research we will only speak about the last two on this list, workforce engagement and public perception, but if you want to read about the other 6 items on Deloitte’s list of key risks it can be found here.

 

The risk surrounding workforce engagement refers to how the existing (human) workforce will react to seeing people being made redundant and how they react to having fewer colleagues in the workplace. The paper also mentions that this risk can be largely mitigated by involving the workforce in the adoption of a digital workforce and training them in how the nature of jobs in business will change as a result.

 

The risk of public perception primarily focuses on how the media is capable of sensationalising the adoption of an automated workforce, creating fear in the minds of people who are not well educated on what the digital workforce is, and in turn create a bad reputation for the company. The fact that this was listed as one of eight items that are considered the key risks to the implementation of a digital workforce just goes to show that there is a level of misunderstanding and poor reporting on the matter which already exists and will most likely only grow as we see a more wide spread adoption of the automated workforce as research into AI continues.

 

The last section of Deloitte’s paper under the heading “Considering the implications for the human workforce” talks about the future outlook for current jobs in the workforce as many of these roles gradually become automised. Starting on a relatively gloomy note, it suggests that according to some research up to 40% of jobs that existed in 2017 will be lost to the digital workforce at some point in the foreseeable future. It proceeds to talk about how large changes have happened in the past, with the introduction of cars, electricity, computers, the internet, etc. and how all of these things have had positive impacts on our lives (overall) and that there is no reason to suggest the automation of many jobs in the workforce would be any different. In essence this means that in the past people have always been able to adapt to large changes and the nature of work has changed to suit the needs of people. On the final page before endnotes the paper lists some areas of work that may struggle to be automised and may be used as the basis for re-training staff to remain relevant in the workforce.