Robots are becoming more and more important to manufacturing worldwide. ZDnet.com says robots could take 50 million jobs in European countries in the next decade. That thought causes Europeans to be nervous about a growing skilled worker shortage.
To succeed alongside robots in new types of work, employees will need skills that they don’t currently have. The concept of “lifelong learning” will gather pace, therefore, as workers acquire new knowledge throughout their careers. It will be largely up to employers to initiate programs to re-train their staff and ensure success in a more automated workplace.
Equally, some new opportunities might emerge to enable a smoother transition for workers. Robotics company Universal Robots, for example, is already deploying “cobots” (or collaborative robots) to businesses, which are designed to simplify the use of automation for human employees.
The company has developed online courses, which it claims enable workers with no engineering background to program a “cobot” in only 87 minutes. The method, according to Universal Robots, reverses the idea that automation is taking jobs away from humans, and instead gives tools to employees to better control their day-to-day activities.
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