Forget Coronavirus — Will Your Career Survive Automation?
This crisis should teach you that your income needs to be future-proofed.
This crisis should teach you that your income needs to be future-proofed.
Many people have lost work recently, but it may only be a temporary measure.
With businesses closed by the demand of the government, some staff are unable to work. However, when this restriction is lifted, there will be a huge demand for the workforce to return and make-up lost profits.
What this situation should teach you though, is that your income needs to be future-proofed.
The UK government gave a list of essential workers that are exempt from any self-isolation:
Health and Social Care
Transport
Education and childcare
Key public services
Local and national government
Food and other necessary goods
Public safety and national security
Utilities, communication & financial services
You can read an in-depth description of the jobs covered in each field here.
My question is, does your job neatly fall into any one of those brackets above?
If not, the temporary virus lockdown is less serious than what’s coming your way. Automation.
Hopefully, you can use this list to draw parallels with your own career choices, to see if automation in your industry could occur and swipe your work from under you.
So who’s at risk? Let’s explore that together.
#1. Jobs machines can do
It’s 10 am, I’m on a train home from London as I write this and I can see a man at the end of this carriage checking tickets.
No surprise, everyone had them. His time has been wasted and I can’t help thinking “his job is not necessary long-term… and not future-proofed”.
Is that something you ever think about?
Your life is a 200mph bullet train and it’s hurtling towards the future.
Your home, your food, your clothes — Everything is supported by your income.
How can you ensure it continues to last?
It’s not just ‘train ticket inspectors’, the same can be said for:
Supermarket checkout assistants
Toll booth operators
Telephone customer service advisors
In the last 2 years, every railway station I’ve been to has an electronic barrier that does the ‘ticket checking’ job before anyone gets on the train.
Ah-ha! But what if people buy a cheaper ticket for stop #3 and get off at stop #7? They’ve thought about that too.
When you exit the train you have to scan your ticket again, to ensure it’s valid.
Toll booths are reducing their manned posts, in exchange for un-manned lanes that accept card payments only.
Supermarkets have introduced self-checkout lanes. Instead of one member of staff serving one customer, it’s now cheaper to pay one member of staff to oversee 10 to 12 self-checkout machines.
That return as an employee is now maximised, but their colleagues value, that the machines have replaced, has gone down. They could be out of work.
Those companies are only as loyal as their profit margins are fat.
I’m not saying all of those jobs will be obsolete, I’m saying that any reduction in staff due to automation, could land you in unemployment.
#2 Jobs a Post-it note could do
There's a budget hotel company here called “Premier Inn” – I book it for business trips. Like a chain, you can guarantee consistency, no matter what UK City you’re in.
Sometimes the known is better than the unknown, even if the unknown is better.
One option when booking is non-flex, which as the name dictates is not flexible. You cannot cancel this booking.
After a family bereavement, I called their customer service department to try my luck.
The trip had to be cancelled and with two weeks notice, they could just re-sell the room and even partially refund me, right?
It was wishful thinking and my hope was inflated once the customer service rep told me she’d put me through to the ‘Non-Flex Team’ to fix the issue.
Wow. They have an entire team, they must deal with situations like mine all the time and probably… No, before I could finish my thought, the new guy on the line from this ‘non-flex’ department said “We don’t ever cancel and refund any rooms for any reason. Ever.”
His job could have been done with a post-it note. It would have been cheaper for the company to send me a messenger-pigeon with the message that is attached, than to employ an entire team to just say “No”.
I wasn’t angry, I booked a non-refundable room not knowing a family member would die, but when I got off the call I couldn’t help but think about the man I’d spoken to…
“That poor guy’s life could be ruined by automation.”
Think about your role, is it easy enough for a computer, answer machine or AI chatbot to do?
If so, you’re massively at risk of losing your career in the long term.
#3 Anyone in middle-management
Why do they exist?
Let’s be honest, most companies create these roles for tax relief. Employing someone else reduces the profits in which they pay tax on. Some corporations even claim government grants and subsidies to create these new roles.
Then the government can collect tax money on that individual.
It’s a useless cycle designed to reduce unemployment figures, inspire “growth” in the economy and suppress creatives with red tape and passive-aggressive office politics.
You don’t ever want to be in the middle.
People at the bottom are cheap and compliant, people at the top are expensive and deemed essential.
Those in the middle are expensive but delegate more than they achieve.
As processes get smoother and profits get slimmer, anyone in a middle-management role is at risk of losing their livelihood to automation.
How do I thrive and secure my income in the future?
You need to think about things that computers, AI or automation can’t do.
Are you a creative?
An entertainer?
A problem-solver?
Do you have a skilled job or craft that can’t be replicated by machines?
If you’re 50 years old or younger, you are most at risk of losing your job to automation and it’s your responsibility to ensure that you don’t.
The older you get, the less chance and confidence you’ll have to re-skill in other areas. So if you’ve read this and find yourself scared, at least you’ll be early enough to change.
The population has gained 1.5billion more people in the last 20 years — and it’s set to gain more than that in the next 20.
Many of those people will need jobs and competition will be rife.
How are you going to ensure it’s you with a secured income and not them instead?
You can’t blame a computer for taking your job, only yourself for not seeing it coming.
If you’d like to find out if your role is a product or service and how that could affect your growth, read my other article below:
The Problem With Your Career Path
A profound tip to help you avoid wasting your life and push through the inevitable glass ceiling.medium.com