Could a tsunami be nature’s way of warning us about massive changes? Look at the timing of the four tsunamis. 1782 and 1883 roughly coincide with the first and second industrial revolutions. Work shifted from agriculture to manufacturing as factories became the main sources of employment. This saw the rise of the blue collared workforce.
What is it with search engines? First it was Google who is building a driverless car. Now the Chinese search engine Baidu testing autonomous cars in California. There are enough people worrying about the millions of drivers who will lose jobs because of driverless cars whenever that happens.
Will HR be replaced by chatbots and machines? The answer is nuanced. The machines are not good at understanding shades of emotions, sarcasm, humor etc. Machines are good at doing “mindless” repetitive tasks. These are the tasks that humans can do without giving it any thought. Routine, repetitive tasks that machines can be trained to do more efficiently than humans will be done by machines. But jobs that depend on social skills and involve complex human interactions will stay with humans. Those who learn to work WITH machines will thrive. HR will certainly need to learn to work with robots who will be part of every workforce. But that is not all. HR will need to be reimagined...
