Many people in different countries around the world are out of work due to coronavirus pandemic.
While some are lucky to work from home, others have not been fortunate enough to keep their jobs after massive layoffs.
Social distancing has also seen some companies continue to operate with fewer employees to avoid overcrowding. Some companies have found other solutions to keep going even without their personnel.
The fear in many workplaces is that robots will eventually take over the running of all applications, but robots will still need humans for smoother operations.
Many employees across the world will still need to up their games by learning new skills to keep up with the robots.
Major robot companies such as Universal Robots are already making this possible by offering online courses that enable employees to learn more about working alongside cobots with ease.
Skills need to keep up with robots
Robot infiltration in many industries is not something everyone is taking lightly. The question is, will people have to learn new skills to keep up with robots in the next decade?
The answer to this question is yes. Employees will need to learn new skills that they do not have to succeed in working alongside robots.
Lifelong learning about robots and AI
Since robots are getting smarter, employees will need lifelong learning throughout their careers to ensure that they keep up with an automated workplace.
The Universal Robots 87-minute engineering online course is one good example of the learning they need to keep up with AI.
Learning provides employees with tools to control their daily activities around machines in a more informed way. Continuous learning also reverses the belief of automation taking jobs away.
Socio-emotional skills
Another area that employers will need to focus on in the coming years is the socio-economic skills of their employees. Deploying robots helps to cut down on costs, increase the quality, and quantity of work, and speed up processes.
However, the machines cannot carry out some roles effectively. Roles that need human interaction such as caregiving, managing other staff members, training, and teaching are better with humans than with machines.
Unlike humans, robots cannot control their emotions or understand other people’s emotions. However, some organizations have robots that use artificial intelligence to detect human emotions and read social cues.
Even though such robots can register emotions, they cannot empathize with the people concerned.
It is, therefore, important to develop emotional intelligence skills in employees to help work alongside these robots in providing effective communication to customers.
Management skills
Many companies already use AI and software programs to control and manage their services, employees, and movement of products.
Implementing the tools helps employees to focus on other important tasks at the workplace. What happens when the machines fail due to one problem or the other?
Instead of bringing in new software or automating everything with a new process, you can save the money and have humans take over until the machines get working again, which is why having management skills comes in handy.
Communication skills
Even though robots can communicate with humans and each other, they still have a long way in replacing humans on that front.
Humans communicate with humans better than robots can, which is why it is important to learn both verbal and non-verbal communication skills.
It would be best if you also polished how you communicate internally with the other people you work with and externally with the clients.
Creativity and problem solving
Robots can solve complex problems that humans cannot solve. However, this does not mean that humans should not learn skills in solving complex problems when called upon to do so.
Humans can work backwards to figure out solutions in situations where there is no clear definition of problems.
Creativity skills that you need to learn are intuitive randomness that an AI machine cannot imitate.
Wrapping it up
In going forward and keeping up with the robots, you need to learn much more than the skills above. It would help if you learned more about decision-making skills, human coordination, negotiation skills, and many more.
It is only by continuous learning that you can rest assured that the robots will not take your job away.