The future of work
Read the first, second and third parts of our Future of Work series
Orhan Pala, Barber
What does your job involve? On a normal [non-lockdown] day, I get in at 8:30am, prepare hot towels, sweep the floor, go through bookings then, on a busy day, I can cut 13-14 people’s hair. I’m also assistant manager here, so I help manage the team, and make sure we choose personalities who fit it.
How long have you been doing it? Seven years.
What training did you get? I learned for 18 months at our academy before I first picked up the scissors. To learn the cut throat razor, you blow up a balloon, cover it in foam and shave it. If it pops, you’ve failed!
How much does it pay? The top guys earn £130-£150 a day. Starters about £100.
What do you think are the hardest bits? The hard bit is helping customers who don’t know what they want. The fussy ones, who complain even if they have the best cut they’ve ever had. Not the technical side. Now, I can see in three seconds what the best cut is and do it. But the social side with customers can be hard. You have to charm them.
What is the most boring bit? Sweeping the floor!
Do you think your job will be the same when you retire? Absolutely. Nothing is going to change. There’s no way a robot could do what I do.
Analysis
As with so many potentially automatable jobs, it might be the social element to haircutting that prevents, or at least slows, the rise of the robots in the sector — though the tech is not simple either. Panasonic did launch a robot hair washer with 24 “fingers” in 2012, but it has hardly caught on. Hair-cutting “helmets” are still at the patent stage. For the moment, even the most trusting customer might be wary of a robot with a cut-throat razor.
Bottom Line: Robots could certainly help Orhan with the parts of the job he hates. In fact, there’s no reason an automatic vacuum cleaner shouldn’t sweep up clippings already, while digital assistants could take bookings.
Implications for this job group: The care and leisure sector is filled with jobs that we might just prefer humans to do. So while they might be automatable, does not mean they will be automated.
It is also a sector where ageing societies and lower immigration could well spark enormous demand — look at elder care in Japan. Yet Japan, too, shows that we should not bank on the human touch. There, robotic aids — like exoskeletons which increase strength — help carers, many of whom suffer bad backs from frequent lifting patients in their care.
But there are also innovations, like the telenoid, a rather creepy looking puppet, or a baby seal toy, which interact with those with dementia, potentially reducing the need for human staff. Humans, it turns out, can endow their relationships with machines with much of the same empathetic importance as relationships with their fellow homo Sapiens.
ONS jobs at risk estimate: 59pc
Alexandra Coatman, Call Centre Worker
What does your job involve? I work for a large health insurance client, taking customer calls, discussing policies, what’s covered and dates for treatment. I do it 100pc from home: computer, headset, phone. The hours are flexible, I pick my own. It’s good from a family point of view. I’d say half of my colleagues are mums with small children. We arrange life around picking up and dropping off kids from school. Not that I’ve met most of them, they might live hundreds of miles away.
Has Covid affected life? No. I’ve always worked from home.
How long have you been doing it? Six years.
What training did you get? Six weeks in a virtual classroom, nine-to-five classes. After that a couple of weeks to be trained on the call software system and the insurance policies themselves.
How much does it pay? £13,500-£28,000. I get a real living wage: £9.30/hour plus a £1/hr performance bonus for hitting targets.
What do you think are the hardest bits? Familiarising myself with all the different policies.
What is the most boring bit? Filling out forms; automatic responses to the same questions that keep coming back — like opening hours.
Will you always do this? It works well for me. I’m happy. The company gives you pathways to progress. You can apply to manage a team or move on to recruitment or training.
Do you think your job will be the same when you retire? I think some things will become more automated. But customer service will only get more important and people like speaking to a person. We’ve all had that experience of frustration hanging on with a machine, or someone a long way away not understanding your needs.
Analysis
Voice recognition is getting better all the time. Ultimately, economist Carl Frey thinks call centre operatives will go the way of the supermarket cashier — a job which the ONS also rates as the most at risk in this group. Weirdly though, at least in the short term, Ms Coatman is right — a focus on customer service has actually seen a mini-boom in reshoring call centre jobs, and that trend has only been bolstered by Covid, where many businesses have closed down their own offices and farmed out telephone work, from receptionists to appointment booking, to third party firms. “Our company has grown massively,” she says.
What starts as an annoyance eventually becomes second nature — that seems to be the experience with automation in other roles in this group, like supermarket cashier. But, perhaps grudgingly, as they have improved we have come to accept automated checkouts. There is no doubt that voice recognition is improving exponentially — not least because of all the practise we are giving it through our smart speakers and smartphone assistants. True, firms are focusing on customer service. But it won’t be long before you can’t tell if it’s a human or an algorithm on the other end of the line.
Would machines actually do it better? Software means an infinitely and perfectly expandable service, round the clock. No waiting. Training on new companies’ policies would be instant, not take weeks.
Bottom Line: A short term boom cannot disguise the long term trend.
Implications for this job group: The irony is that many in this group already worked from home pre-Covid. But being ahead of the game may end up offering little protection from automation. Many sales and customer service jobs can be done remotely, requiring voice recognition, data capture and inputting, and understanding of standardised formulae, like insurance policies — all things at which machines are already highly capable at dealing with, and only getting better. In his list of more than 700 jobs, Carl Frey counts telemarketer as the most automatable job of all!
ONS jobs at risk estimate: 55pc
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