Chief executive officer of PwC’s Southeast Asian consulting services Sundara Raj said it was important for businesses and employees to understand and adapt to the changes that would come with automation.
“What happens when you embrace automation is that it leads to a massive reclassification and reconfiguration of work. It’s not about getting rid of people. It’s (also) not obliteration in entirety. It’s augmentation, reclassification and reconfiguration (of work).
“For example, we have automated teller machines all over the place, but that doesn’t mean that the role of the bank teller is totally obliterated. The teller is still there (and his) role has been reconfigured to do more complex things, to handle different sorts of transactions,” he told The Edge Financial Daily.
Raj said the PwC’s Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation’s (Apec) chief executive officer (CEO) survey released in November 2017 showed that automation was high on the agenda for Asean businesses as the key building block in their strategy to develop a digital workforce.
In Malaysia, 48% of CEOs (versus 29% of Apec CEOs) are moving to new structures of employment including hiring more “gig” talent (defined as short-term or freelance workers) and outsourced labour in light of changing trends of job roles, according to the survey.
Raj said businesses should prioritise creating value-added roles to give employees a meaningful and sustainable job.
He said this would require a lot of reskilling, retooling, a bit of education and a mindset change.
Raj said one of the things that PwC aimed to do was to encourage employers to openly engage in discussion of the changes that would come with automation and how to prepare its people.
Governments, too, have a huge role to play, including giving incentives to businesses to get them to help their workforce, he added.