Vicinity Centres recently started trialling whether robots could be used to clean shop room floors. Credit:iStock "Already four weeks into the trial we are seeing some organisational savings in terms of wages," she said. "That said, we are starting to think about how we redeploy these cleaners - some are contractors - and how do we re-skill and redistribute the workforce to other areas. These are things at the top of our mind." Meanwhile JB Hi-Fi's board is preparing for the entrance of overseas online retailer Amazon into the Australian market. Amazon could generate sales of up to $4 billion in Australia with a focus on electrical items, which would be a direct hit on JB Hi-FI and Gerry Harvey's Harvey Norman business.

Wai Tang says the arrival of Amazon is something JB Hi-Fi's board is preparing for. Credit:JOE ARMAO Ms Tang, who is also a non-executive director on JB Hi-Fi's board, said the entrance of Amazon was front and centre of JB Hi-Fi's current strategic planning, including how it defended its market share. "How do you change the business," she said. "Still rely on bricks and mortar or do we make sure our e-commerce platform is robust and customer service oriented? ANZ board's Jane Halton: Jobs will be lost due to automation. Credit:JOE ARMAO "They [Amazon] are coming in and they have scale to buy cheap electronics."

She said in such an environment it was crucial that the company re-examined the business model, as well as how it re-skilled staff "to be more process-oriented". Other company directors are thinking about how they deal with digital disruption, including the rise of automation, artificial intelligence and associated issues of cyber security. Marie McDonald, non-executive director of CSL, said billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates' idea of placing a tax on robots was a bad one and could potentially stifle innovation. Jane Halton, who in October joined the board of ANZ after stepping down as secretary at the Department of Finance, said the use of artificial intelligence was growing rapidly, but had created security questions. "In certain parts of the health sector you're increasingly reliant on the transfer of information electronically," she said.

"There's an AI innovation coming in already in X-rays and pathology. That presents a challenge because the profession that people have trained for years and years to undertake is now something that can be entirely done or assured by AI. "You also have the overlay of cyber security. If that information is moved electronically, the opportunity for disruption is real." A recent paper by StartupAUS said 4.6 million jobs would be lost if Australians didn't become digitally ready. "Nobody hankers for the day where it was a genuine profession to spend your life shovelling horse remains from streets of Melbourne," Ms Halton said. "There are jobs that are going to disappear." She said there had been a huge mindset shift in leadership, "in thinking about how we get our staff to adapt and what the opportunities are in increasing automation".