*By Ana Cláudia Donner Abreu
Both here in Brazil and around the world, digital transformation has had a major impact on the way work is performed. Digital technologies have changed the way organizations operate and people perform their jobs.
A major wave of automation is underway, which increases labor productivity but also displaces many tasks, requiring reskilling and support to get people through this transition. It is a paradox that so many people are already underemployed or unemployed and that, on the other hand, many employers face shortages of people with the technical and soft skills needed by their organizations. Talent shortages are particularly acute in occupations that require digital skills.
In Brazil, one search from MGI (2018) verified that with the existing technology it is already possible to automate half of the total time of the existing work. Manufacturing and retail trade are the sectors with the greatest potential for automation, with 10.9 and 10.4 million full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs automatable, respectively. Manufacturing is also the sector with the highest automation potential rate (69%), followed by transportation and storage (61%).
The same research states that the equivalent of 15.7 million full-time jobs (about 14% of these total jobs) could be eliminated by 2030 due to automation technologies, in an intermediate adoption scenario. Even so, the demand for work and for workers tends to increase as the economy also grows, which can be boosted by technological progress, creating a virtuous cycle of innovation and growth.
For this cycle of growth to occur, professional training throughout the career will be essential as the skills needed to occupy jobs also tend to change . This, in itself, challenges the current educational model of training and training people, which is still designed for an industrial society, requiring a new approach to lifelong learning. Thus, we are facing the challenge of training and support so that people can face this continuous transition.
The new jobs will be very different from those replaced by automation, but projections of increased demand for goods and services indicate that enough occupations will be created to compensate for job losses. In advanced countries, this is already a verified pattern. Around here, around 10% of the workforce will have to change their occupational category by 2030.
For all of the above, it is necessary to make training people a permanent process, part of the innovation culture of organizations. The digital transformation is already changing and impacting the world of work and has the power to increase the productivity of the economy. But, it is now necessary to choose whether the disruption that has been caused will be an opportunity or a trap for our country and our organizations.
The exposed dilemma demands a joint solution, combining actions by the Academy, the Market and the States. It requires the co-production of public policies to support organizations and people to face this transition. ABES, through its think tank, intends to facilitate the articulation of a response to this challenge, articulating its governance network both in the formulation of public purposes, as well as in the implementation and evaluation of public policies.
*Ana Cláudia Donner Abreu is a THINK TANK ABES Researcher – IEA/USP and Senior Researcher at the Integration Engineering and Knowledge Governance Laboratory at PPGEGC/UFSC.
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