I hate to see the headline: "Robots are Taking Our Jobs". It’s alarmist and simplistic. It doesn’t really address the issue that so many people—businesses, educators, civic leaders, nonprofits, and all workers— should be thinking about. Changes in technology have always changed the way we do our jobs— AI-controlled assembly lines, smart phones, Zoom/Skype/Blue Jeans web calls, etc, come to mind today.
In October, I sat down with Benjamin Pring of Cognizant's Center for the Future of Work at the Chamber Foundation’s Talent Forward 2019 to talk about the future of work. He made a strong case that we should be talking about disappearing tasks, not disappearing jobs.
“Ten to 12 percent of jobs will go away. Ten to 13 percent of new jobs will be created. But the vast bulk of jobs — 75 percent — will be the same, but they will be using this next-generation technology to do that work faster, more efficiently, more productively, more profitably, and, hopefully, more enjoyably,” Pring told me.
He had a lot to say about what changing technology means to the workforce and the worker.
We have a few more great podcast interviews coming up from Talent Forward 2019 in the next few weeks—Gayatri Agnew from Walmart and Andrew Dunckelman from Google.org—so stay tuned. Did you read the post on Goodwill's CEO, Steve Preston? To subscribe, visit WorkingNation.com, or find the Work in Progress podcast on the future of work and the future of workers anywhere you get your podcasts.
We hope you enjoy the conversations.
