Act Digital / Think Human

In the future, when we have to share the workplace with new digital colleagues, new human skills will come into play.

On Friday the 28th of September, First Chair group organized the Act Digital/Think Human seminar, where presenters from Envison, Harbinger, Gorm Agency and Unique Human Capital gave their input on how to act with robots in the future and what human competencies are going to come into play.

Bo Uggershøj also presented and spoke of how KLS Nordic, a company that develops inventory management and drive-in for pharmacies, won Børsen’s Gazelle Award by focusing on the value chain and putting robotization and digitalization on the company agenda. When digitalization becomes a theme in the company, employees can become fearful – what does this mean for my job? Will there be organizational changes? In these situations, Bo Uggershøj advised management that they should be visible and address any doubts and uncertainties the employees may have. Digitalization must be a large common symbiosis, where everyone takes part in the process.

Tony Minana, Country Manager at Digitial Workforce participated as a main speaker at the seminar. As an expert on the RPA area, he spoke of how, in the wake of robots entering the workforce, more than 58,000 million jobs will be created worldwide. However, almost as many jobs will disappear, but restructuring of jobs and competencies will follow.

Employees use 35% of their time on regular tasks, 2/3 of which can be automated, thus freeing a lot of time to be used more optimally. This is especially true within the financial sector, but also in the public sector as well as in healthcare and industry. Robots have the advantage that they can work 24/7 and have a precision rate of 95%, where humans have a precision rate of 80%. As such, robots are much more effective. Moreover, Tony Minana spoke of how to reap even more benefits by pairing technologies such as RPA, AI, Machine Learning etc. and, in that way, increasing productivity and quality. Pairing several different technologies is called Cognitive Computing. Start with smaller RPA tasks and you will soon experience ROI.

Companies can also experience a lot of pressure to keep up with the new trends, and revitalization requires resources. Nevertheless, Andres Tranæs, CEO in Envision spoke of how businesses must avoid stagnation. It is essential to be agile in world moving at a fast pace. Dr. Abraham Twerski’s video and perspective on “How do lobsters grow” explains clearly why instead of stagnating it is important to follow the development and grow from it. Thinking outside the box creates creativity. Creativity is the fuel for change. When you put a focus on creativity you quickly begin to see potential – and you can reach your target groups in completely new ways.

The digital development also focuses on human relationships. For example, Facebook’s purpose of bringing people closer together when in reality, it creates a distance – and a dependency on the medium. According to Rasmus G. Kristensen, Partner in Harbinger, the distance to others and the dependency on the medium creates a situation where people are more direct in their approach to the world and fellow users on digital platforms – the filter gradually disappears. Therefore, it is important to remember that it is people who are receiving the message. With the entry of robot journalism, which in the future will account for 90% of journalism, we must remember that robots cannot be held accountable, but the humans behind the robots still have an ethical and moral responsibility for the written word. Robots do not have guiding principles either so it is important that humans create the guiding principles and evaluate the relevance of the written medium.

Morten Gad, Creative Director & Partner in Gorm Agency underlined Rasmus G. Kristensen’s point. In a world consisting of more and more robots, we must remind ourselves that we must relate to the technology as humans. Everyone has a responsibility and moral obligation. Robots cannot be held accountable for their actions – but the humans behind them can, and we must remember that as we enter into a closer and closer working relationship with them in the future.

Digital development is moving fast – very fast. If you look back to time when Apple introduced the scroll function on iPhones and the revolutionary thought behind that advance - we have come a long way since then. Today, that intuitive function is a basic and invaluable part of our use of the medium. In the future, we will experience robots creating intuitive solutions which will become basic for us, both in our work and private life. Be ready to change, set guiding principles and be aware of what we as humans get out of it. Keep robots, or the people behind them, responsible not least on the ethical and moral level.