There is no question that the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) will bring massive upheaval to people everywhere, and its promise of massive productivity improvements has business and government leaders salivating in anticipation.
They expect huge capital investments will garner even larger returns -- and it seems that they are correct. Executives, shareholders, and politicians rejoice but the majority of the people impacted have little input.
And now with the 4IR looming, both parties must deal with the implications of their broken relationship. Business leaders are tempted to implement massive automation upgrades through robots, artificial intelligence (AI), and the internet of things (IoT) technologies, but are concerned about how to practically get it done.
Part of that concern stems from the need to put those technologies into spaces physically occupied by the very same employees they intend to eliminate -- what reason do these people have to cooperate with these initiatives?
Rather than cooperating, the workforce entrenches itself against management by threatening work stoppages, passively resisting by failing to follow instructions, or even actively sabotaging new projects.
Both sides find themselves facing the need to adapt and overcome, or risk fading away as other organizations overtake them. What is to be done?
The need for leadership
Two things must be accomplished, then, for the world to realize the full potential of a new industrial revolution.
There must be a good working relationship between business leaders and their working-class employees. Much reconciliation is needed in most large organizations but new emerging ones must make this a priority as well.
Second, technology upgrades must actually be implemented. There are many theoretical use cases and a limited number of success stories available now.
But transitioning from what is theoretically possible, and things that have been done on a limited basis, into scalable technologies that are feasible to implement, is a big task.
Who, then, are the people we should look to as leaders in this process? Which group is best equipped to lead the way?
Clearly cooperation is a prerequisite to success, but each group has an area of expertise and responsibility that it must focus on. Neither will be successful in its area without the other and the entire project will bog down, and possibly fail completely, if just one piece of the process breaks down.
The hostile relationship between the two parties is the more foundational issue and must be seen as a pre-eminent issue. Because the business leaders hold power, it must be they who accept leadership in improving the situation.
Excellent leadership by those in power begins with taking a genuine interest in those under their charge -- choosing to bring good to them insofar as they are able to sustainably do so.
This represents a significant departure from how most executives see their industrial workers and will take serious effort on the part of the managers to change their thinking and habits in this area.
The obvious solutions that have typically been presented in scenarios like this are for executives to give their workforce more wages, breaks, holiday time, benefits, etc, but those are very poor places to start, and are often not even possible, as when a business is already strapped for cash or other resources.
But the real issue is that they miss the heart of the problem, namely that workers see managers and executives as disinterested and possibly downright hostile towards them.
Business leaders must genuinely choose to care for their workforce and take definitive steps to re-train their thought patterns and habits until they routinely and automatically make the good of their workforce a key ingredient in every decision they make.
If any positive relationship is to be maintained for the long term, this must be done regardless of whether the workforce has done anything special to earn such goodwill from the management.
Certainly, employees who are counterproductive or toxic to the workplace culture must be removed, but managers should show patience in light of the relational context they find themselves in.
Often the best workers are the ones who are most taken advantage of, so managers must make special efforts to identify these employees and promote their well-being.
Implementing the new technology
When workers realize that their interests are being cared for by their leaders, they become free to make a choice of their own: Do they continue to fight for every scrap of personal benefit they can get out of their employer? Or do they respond with generosity and choose to look for ways to bring good to their company through their own hard work and creativity?
Certainly, the company hopes that they choose the latter path but the workforce, too, stands to benefit from this option. The community of workers will find their workplace to be a far more pleasant place when everyone is looking out for the good of everyone else.
Friendship, loyalty, and creativity will naturally result -- things that everyone enjoys but also things whose natural side effects include business success.
So, as long as they receive the support of management, the workforce will eventually choose the latter path. Although change may take some time, as long as management remains committed to the good of the workforce, the culture will change for the better. As the workforce’s attitude changes, they will begin experimenting with ideas they believe will benefit the organization. They must be given the freedom to try (and possibly fail with) new ideas. The point of focus should be that they learn to exercise their creativity for the company’s benefit.
Managers must exercise wisdom in how much freedom individual employees are given with these new ideas so as to limit the risk they expose the organization to while the workers learn to appropriately exercise their new freedoms.
As they become effective in independently implementing new ideas, the workforce will naturally want to improve their processes as much as possible.
Managers will discover that the workers actually desire to improve the number of goods produced per worker, and simple improvements will eventually give way to more complex solutions as the company gets better at its tasks.
The workforce will eventually be leading the effort to implement robots, AI, etc. The surprising result when a business achieves this kind of cohesiveness is that it actually creates many more jobs than it eliminates.
It achieves higher productivity, higher profits, happier employees, clients, and shareholders. The specific jobs are never “safe” because the workers are always looking to improve how they do business, but the employment of the workers is as safe as it can be because their business is so successful and their management cares about them.
As technology continues to advance at breakneck speed, we are tempted to focus wholly on how to harness the advances to get what we want. But to focus on the self is a sure path to misery, as is well documented in philosophy and religion throughout human history.
The 4IR is already bringing upheaval to society and much more is certainly in store for us, but it can be a great force for good if we commit ourselves to be the servants of our fellow people.
Sumaiya Noor is a development sector research professional and an MDS student at the University of Dhaka. She can be reached at [email protected].
