19 Feb 2017

Now, more than ever, jobs are transforming and evolving. The jobs we do and the way we work them is changing for pretty much everyone.

We publish a lot of articles about this stuff on Year13—about future-proofing yourself workwise—but this one is specifically for the tradies and soon to be tradies. We want to give you an idea of how trades might be replaced by computers, machines or robots and what you can do about it.

So we decided to ask an expert: Ben James. He’s one of the General Managers at BUSY At Work, which is a non-for-profit that helps people find jobs, especially in trades.

Ben started off by explaining what happened to Kodak, a camera film company that went bankrupt in 2012. “Just because Kodak no longer exists as a brand, that doesn’t mean we have stopped producing images.”

Kodak was once the world’s largest producer of camera film but as digital technology advanced, printing photos became almost unheard of. Now, even though pretty much every man, woman and child has a camera phone in their hand for about 9 hours per day, nobody prints them out any more. People simply don’t buy film anymore and Kodak has gone the way of the dinosaur.

And as technology advances, other industries will start dying too.

We’ll probably always need houses and toilets and lights and haircuts and food. But the way these things are built or prepared or consumed will most likely change and become more efficient.

Research by Mckinsey and Co has predicted that, “90 per cent of what welders, cutters, solderers do… has the technical potential for automation.” These roles in manufacturing along with hospitality and retail as the most likely to be replaced by machines. In hospitality, however, it’s not so much the trained chefs who are at risk of losing their jobs to automation, but the dishwashers, kitchen hands and servers.

Ben says, “All trades will be affected by automation to some point but some will be affected faster than others.” The ones that are most at risk are the industries that require a lot of “predictable physical work”. This is because machines could potentially do them more cheaply and efficiently.

“The best way to maintain job security is to work hard and be the best at your job,” says Ben. “Because then you will have opportunity with your employer to evolve within the industry.”

Essentially, tradies need to be constantly learning things and upping their skillsets to remain valuable. Ben suggests that tradies should, “engage with their industry body and talk openly about their concerns with their peers and their employers. Don’t be afraid of the change – embrace change and run with it.”

His final point is that there’s no need to freak out. He says “It’s important to recognise that our Government invests heavily through the programs they outsource to companies like BUSY At Work to help people through the transition.”

“The difference now is that you can’t just learn a trade and that’s it. You need to keep on learning and upskilling so that you continue to evolve.”