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The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) won significant raises for its 45,000 dockworker members this month after a three-day strike that briefly threatened shipping and international trade.
That victory, however, was colored by ongoing efforts at the ports to address automation and its potential effect on long-term job security for its members, which remains very much unresolved.
“One of the things that strikes me is it doesn’t matter what the group is or what the industry is. We are seeing this pop up in just about every industry,” said Alexander Alonso, the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) chief data & insights officer.
The dockworkers strike to protect jobs in the wake of leapfrogging automation technology mirrors broader employee sentiment toward the technology as it shows up more and more at work.
Unease and fears in the workplace about automation and AI tools, like those that have become wildly available for businesses thanks to advances in generative AI, remain as more employers adopt tools that have the potential to amend employee workflows.
“Most HR professionals report out that about one in five of their workers have a healthy mistrust of automation and or some form of automation like artificial intelligence,” Alonso said.
However, HR professionals have the potential to help facilitate this transition to an AI-enabled future of work. One way to address job security concerns among employees is education, both education on AI and how to use it at work, as well as reskilling efforts for those displaced by the technology, he said. Some 72% of global CEOs surveyed by KPMG between July 15 and August 29 expect generative AI will not affect the number of jobs at their organizations, noting that upskilling will be needed. Meanwhile, 27% believe it will result in job creation.
HR professionals are shifting from a “full-blown transformation” mindset toward AI integration to thinking about how this is an educational opportunity, he said, “Really the skilling stage and the commitment that exists right now in any one organization is to understand: How do I build the kind of workforce planning mix that allows me to skill people, and at the same time integrate these kinds of tools?”
HR leaders can lean into this AI momentum by focusing on skills and looking at talent differently.
“If anything, AI might actually be the best friend of a skilling movement in most organizations,” he said. “It’s going to propel me to want to engage in skills-based hiring [and] skills-based talent development more so than if I was doing HR business as usual.”