Being a Solutions Consultant for a leading technology company, my passion is delivering technology solutions to improve business efficiency. My daily schedule consists of meeting with growing businesses and proposing technology solutions to help achieve growth. 

However, there is often some negative stigma about implementing new technology into a growing company and one of the most common questions/remarks I receive is the issue of technology replacing humans and taking away jobs from those who have helped build the company.

It’s not a new issue and it will be an issue for many years to come as some see the future as the dawn of the robotic age replacing humans in the workforce. This has been on the back of everyone’s minds for many years and although it may appear that we will soon be slaves to the robots, I beg to differ.

So here are my thoughts on the subject.

It’s true that technology can replace manual tasks and unfortunately, replace people allocated to these roles. This has been evident for many years and manual tasks are quickly becoming replaced by the robots as they are a more viable option for many businesses. 

However, technology cannot completely replace a staff member and you cannot run a whole business without humans. Here's Why…

The need for humans in business

Despite all the hype about Artificial Intelligence and the many claims that AI has the ability to mimic human thought processes and thinking patterns, the truth is that we are still a long way away from actually creating a C3PO capable of acting and thinking like a human. As we know from the Star Wars franchise, even C3PO, an advanced cyborg has shortfalls when compared to real human beings.

In this age of technology, every organisation is looking to minimise resource consuming tasks to give them a competitive advantage and let the humans handle complex interactions that a robot cannot. In recent readings, I found a quote by one of the foremost brains of our time.

“We anticipate that future will leverage human skills, empathy, social and emotional intelligence, but more than anything, individuals will continually have to learn and upskill themselves to remain employable” (Tumelo Seaketso, Director, Deloitte)

I find that this is exceptionally true. Humans have the capacity to continuously grow and improve on their skills and knowledge, and this will become more important in the future. Whereas technology still has its limits but is great at doing repetitive, monotonous and arduous tasks in some cases.

Embracing technology for future growth

So fear not, your job is not at risk of extinction if you are looking towards the future! We should all embrace technology and look forward to how we can add even more value to our customers and let technology handle all the data processing. One thing that technology will never have is the ability to use emotional intelligence in decision making. Sometimes this is a good characteristic for humans and leads to opportunities that are only created due to challenging the status norm. Other times, it spells disaster as we use intuition rather than statistical decision making. 

We can be certain that with technology replacing mundane tasks, we can spend more time building new relationships and enhancing existing ones. This means that if your staff are willing to learn, adapt and upskill, your business will be in an excellent position poised for growth into the future.

The PNORS Technology Group are proud to offer End-to-End IT Solutions that utilise with both technology and humans to improve business efficiency.