Alleviating job anxiety due to the digital revolution

The world’s fourth industrial revolution is bringing major changes to the workplace. © demaerre, iStock.com

Professor Steven Dhondt has told EU people worried about losing their jobs to automation to take heart.

Dhondt, an expert in work and organizational change at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, has been studying the impact of technology on jobs for the past 40 years. Having led an EU research project on the issue, he emphasizes opportunities rather than threats.

correct vision

“We need to develop new business practices and welfare supports, but with the right vision, technology should not be seen as a threat,” Dhondt said. ‘Rather, we should use it to shape the future and create new jobs.’

Overall, the rapid and accelerating development of digital technologies is considered the world’s fourth industrial revolution, bringing fundamental changes to the way people live and work.

If the first industrial revolution was driven by steam, the second industrial revolution was driven by electricity, and the third industrial revolution was driven by electronics, the latest industrial revolution will be remembered for automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI). This is known as ‘Industry 4.0’.

“Whether it was the Luddite movement in the 1800s that introduced automatic spinning machines to the wool industry, or concerns about AI today, questions about the impact of technology on jobs actually raise broader questions about employment practices and labor markets,” Dhondt said. It reflects,” Dhondt said.

He is also a senior scientist at TNO, an independent research organization based in the Netherlands.

An EU project led by Dhondt explored how businesses and welfare systems can better adapt to support workers in the face of technological change. The initiative, called Beyond4.0, began in January 2019 and concluded in June 2023.

The emergence of self-driving cars and AI-assisted robots has great potential for economic growth and social development, but it also sounds an alarm.

A 2019 analysis by the European Center for Vocational Training and Development found that more than 70% of EU citizens are concerned that new technologies will “steal” people’s jobs.

regional success

Beyond4.0 researchers studied companies across Europe that have taken proactive, practical steps to empower their employees.

“We should not see technology as a threat. Rather, we should use it to shape our future and create new jobs.”

– BEYOND4.0 Professor Stephen Dont

One example is Metaglas, a family-run Dutch glass company. The company decided that it needed to invest more in its own workforce to remain competitive in the face of technological change.

Metaglas gave employees greater openness to management and a greater voice in the company’s direction and product development.

According to Dhondt, this move, which the company has dubbed “MetaWay,” has helped it retain employees while also getting profits reinvested in them.

He said this example shows how important a manager’s approach to the overall problem is in the business world.

“Technology can be an enabler rather than a threat, but the decision on this is up to the organization’s leadership,” Dhondt said. ‘When management uses technology to reduce the quality of jobs, jobs are at risk. ‘When management uses technology to improve jobs, we see workers and organizations learning and improving.’

The Metaglas story has been incorporated into a “knowledge bank” to inform business practices more broadly.

Dhondt also highlighted the importance of a European region where businesses and vocational trainers come together to support people.

BEYOND4.0 studied the case of Oulu, a Finnish city that was once a major outpost for mobile phone giant Nokia. In the 2010s, the collapse of Nokia’s mobile phone business led to a “brain drain” as Oulu’s engineers were laid off.

But collaboration between Nokia, local universities and policymakers has helped grow new businesses, including digital spin-offs, and kept hundreds of engineers in central Finland, once a trading hub for wood tar, timber and salmon.

According to Dhondt, some of Nokia’s engineers went to local hospitals to work on “e-health,” or electronic health services, while others moved to paper manufacturer Stora Enso.

There are more high-tech jobs in Oulu these days than there were in Nokia’s heyday. The BEYOND4.0 team has positioned the region as a successful “entrepreneurial ecosystem” that can help inform policies and practices in other parts of Europe.

income support

When people lose their jobs, the project also explores new forms of welfare support.

Dhondt’s Finnish colleagues examined the impact of Finland’s two-year experiment with “universal basic income” (UBI) and used it to evaluate the feasibility of a different model called “participation income.”

In the UBI experiment, participants each received 560 euros per month, which was paid with no strings attached. UBI is often touted as the answer to automation, but BEYOND4.0’s assessment of the Finnish experiment was that it could undermine society’s principles of solidarity.

The project’s participatory income approach requires recipients of financial assistance to undertake activities deemed useful to society. For example, this may include caring for older people or children.

Although the details are still being worked out, the BEYOND4.0 team has discussed participation income with the Finnish government, and the Finnish Parliament has put the idea on the agenda for discussion.

Dhondt hopes the results of this project, including wellbeing support, will help other organizations better navigate the changing technology landscape.

job matchmaker

Another researcher who wants to help people adapt to technological change is Dr Aisling Tuite, a labor market expert at South East Technical University in Ireland.

“We wanted to develop a product that could be useful not only for people looking for work, but also for those who support them.”

– Dr. Aisling Tuite, HECAT

Tuite looked at how digital technologies can help job seekers find the right job.

She coordinated an EU-funded project to help unemployed people find work or develop new skills through more open online systems.

The project, called HECAT, ran from February 2020 to July 2023 and brought together researchers from Denmark, France, Ireland, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland.

In recent years, many countries have introduced active labor market policies, deploying computer-based systems to profile workers and help career counselors target those most in need.

This sounds very targeted, but in reality it often pushes people into jobs that aren’t right for them and creates job retention problems, Tuite said.

‘Our current employment system often fails to get people into the right places. It just moves people elsewhere,’ she said. ‘Often what people need is individualized support or new training. ‘We wanted to develop a product that could be useful not only for people looking for work, but also for those who support them.’

Ready to run

HECAT’s online system combines new vacancies with career advice and current labor market data.

The system has been tested during the project and is now available in beta through My Labor Market and can be used in all EU countries for which data is available.

This can help people figure out where jobs are and how to best position themselves to secure them, according to Tuite.

In addition to displaying job openings by location and quality, the system provides detailed information about job opportunities and labor market trends, including what types of jobs are growing in a particular region and the average time it takes to find a job in a particular sector.

Tuite said feedback from test participants has been positive.

She said one young female job seeker said she felt more confident exploring new career paths, while another said knowing how long the average “job wait time” takes would ease her job search stress.

Looking ahead, Tuite hopes that HECAT researchers will be able to demonstrate the system at government employment services agencies in a number of EU countries in the coming months.

‘There is growing interest in this work across the EU’s public employment services and we are very pleased,’ she said.

(This article was updated on 21 September 2023 to include reference to Steven Dhondt’s role at TNO in the Netherlands.)

The research for this article was funded by the EU.

This article was originally published in Horizon, the EU research and innovation magazine.