equilibrium in the division of labour between human workers, robots and algorithms. Workforce planning and investment decisions taken today will play a crucial role in shaping this process. Waves of automation have reshaped the global economy throughout history. Since the first and second industrial revolutions, organisations have bundled specific work tasks into discrete job roles, giving rise to distinct occupational profiles and optimising the process of economic value creation for the most efficient division of labour between humans and machines technologically available at the time. As technological change and progress have increased, workforce productivity by ‘re-bundling’ work tasks into new kinds of jobs, so they have witnessed the decline of obsolete job profiles and the dynamic rise of wholly new ones, historically leaving the balance of net job and economic value creation firmly on the positive side. The rise of workplace automation in its many forms has the potential to vastly improve productivity and augment the work of human employees. Automation technology can help remove the burden of repetitive administrative work and enable employees to focus on solving more complex issues while reducing the risk of error, allowing them to focus on value- added tasks. Examples of now well-established and almost unremarkable automation-based augmentation technology that hardly existed 25 years ago range from computer aided design and modelling software used by architects, engineers and designers, to robotic medical tools used by doctors and surgeons, through to search engine technology that allows researchers to find more relevant information. In theory, these technologies take away tasks from workers, but in practice their effect is to vastly amplify and augment their abilities. From one recent estimate, the next wave of labour-augmented automation technology could lead to an average labour productivity increase across sectors of about 30% compared to 2015, with some significant variation by industry. For employers, optimally integrating humans and automation technology will require an analytical ability to deconstruct the work performed in their organisations today into discrete elements—that is, viewing the work tasks of today’s job roles as independent and fungible components—and then reconfiguring these components to reveal human-machine
collaboration opportunities that are more efficient, effective and impactful. Among other things, success in this domain will require a strategic repositioning of the corporate human resource function and expanded organisational capabilities in data analysis and workforce analytics. For workers, improved productivitymay allow them to re-focus their work on high-value activities that play to the distinctive strengths of being human. However, to unlock this positive vision, workers will need to have the appropriate skills that will enable them to thrive in the workplace of the future. And as discussed in detail in the next section, even for those who currently have these skills, the pace at which tasks are being augmented and skills are changing continues to accelerate. The reskilling imperative Current shifts underway in the workforce will displace some workers while concurrently create new opportunities for others. However, maximising the gains and minimising the losses requires attention not merely from policymakers, but also coherent responses from companies to find win- win solutions for workers and for their bottom line. Leading research documents the potentially divergent impact of the introduction of automation technology, demonstrating how both job design (how tasks are organised into jobs) and employees’ possession (or lack thereof) of skills complementing newly introduced technologies contribute to eventual outcomes for companies and workers. Workers with in-demand skills ready for augmentation may see their wages and job quality increase considerably. Conversely, even if automation only affects a subset of the tasks within their job role, workers lacking appropriate skills to adapt to new technologies and move on to higher value tasks may see their wages and job quality suppressed by technology steadily eroding the value of their job, as it encroaches on the tasks required to perform it. Therefore, central to the success of any workforce augmentation strategy is the buy-in of a motivated and agile workforce, equipped with futureproof skills to take advantage of new opportunities through continuous retraining and upskilling.
Key skills demand trends show a continued fall in demand for
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Malaysian Technology Strategic Outlook 2019/2020 Intergration of High Technology
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