Automation, unemployment and re-envisioning the nature of work

This project explores an intervention aimed at helping workers approach the potential job loss and labour market disruption due to automation.

Automation and technological change are increasingly commonplace in the workplace. However, this rapid change is likely to create skill obsolescence and unemployment on a massive scale. McKinsey’s Global Institute predicts that up to 375 million people could be made to switch industries and/or re-skill by 2030. This is likely to disproportionately impact older workers, many of whom have built up specific and less transferable skills, and manual blue-collar occupations, which tend to require more codifiable skills and routine tasks.

A proactive approach to reskill and retrain workers is crucial to avoid deepening economic and social inequality. An intervention would be developed that provides the opportunity for participants to learn about themselves, their community, and other industries through reflection and volunteering. It would then be tested to see whether there are any changes in participants’ mindset and approaches to the evolving labour market; in particular, whether it enables participants to respond more creatively and purposefully to change.

This pilot programme will be broken down into two stages:

1. The first pilot will be exploratory and result in the creation of a workshop curriculum, a surveying instrument, and a method for tracking employees over time.
2. The second pilot will begin testing the intervention in a controlled study. This phase will provide the information needed to conduct a large-scale multinational experiment in the future.

Participants will play an active role in shaping the design and structure of the curriculum; reinforcing the idea that workers can be agents of change instead of just passive victims. Success will be measured against four key dimensions: worker agency and autonomy, altruism and non-cognitive soft-skills, employee performance, and career choices.

The project team intends for the pilot programme to have a global impact, helped in part by collaboration with a multinational corporation. This collaboration should help the workshop curriculum, training manual, survey, and tracking instruments be adopted throughout a variety of industries. The results will be made widely available, including with trade unions, labour organisations, and other interested parties.