Is a robot coming for my job? It’s the workforce transformation question of the 21st century, plaguing employees at all levels: from teenagers bagging groceries at the supermarket check-out to insurance actuaries calculating risk.
In an Australian first, the University of New England has worked with strategy and economics consultants AlphaBeta to develop an online tool that calculates not only your exposure to automation and other sources of change in your current job, but also how your job will change over the coming decades.
Anthony Smith, Director of Marketing at UNE, who commissioned the tool explains that it was something that hadn’t been done before.
“Our market research shows that many people are concerned about the security of their careers as new technology like automation and AI penetrates further into the workplace. The data about this tends to be very difficult to relate to as an individual,” Anthony said
“We wanted to design something to help people use the data in a personal way and identify how exposed they are to job change in the future.”
Unlike other automation forecasting tools, Future of Work Predictor is able to look beyond the likelihood of redundancy from automation to examine transformation of industries and determine ways individual jobs will change.
The tool breaks the Australian economy down to over 3,000 different jobs and in turn breaks those jobs into thousands of separate tasks. Job change is then assessed at the task level, allowing users to gain insight into how their personal career will be transformed.
Kate Pounder, Director at AlphaBeta, led the analysis that underpins the Future of Work Predictor.
“Workers are aware that their jobs are changing but they are struggling to come to terms with how they can future-proof their employment. It’s a completely understandable fear, and one that this tool is hoping to help people navigate,” Kate said
“The first part of the tool shows you how the tasks in your job have already changed and forecasts further transformation over the next two, five and twelve years. It will tell you which tasks will take up more of your time and which will take up less. Importantly, it gives you that insight in a positive way: it will show you what tasks you can focus to ensure you have the best chance of avoiding redundancy.
“The second part of the tool uses your location, in combination with your education and training levels, to determine how competitive you are. It will show you the average wage for a person in your position and where are you in the pack in terms of education. It will also show the projected job growth for your career - how many jobs are currently available and are there going to be more or less of those positions heading into the future?”
Find out how your job will be impacted by clicking on the link: https://studyat.une.edu.au/futureofwork
