The workplace has evolved and changed at an unbelievable pace over the past few decades. We have moved from typewriter to word processor and memo to email — the digital revolution has left no industry untouched. And now we all need to get better at reinventing ourselves to stay relevant and employable in the labor market.

The robots are coming

In a recent poll of the business community in the US and Europe, an Oracle HCM survey conducted by BI Studios found that the vast majority of respondents (78%) believe the rise of robots and other artificial intelligence will affect their businesses in one way or another over the next three years. About half of them think the impact will be a highly significant one. The survey uncovered four key findings:

A majority (63%) of people think that robotics will impact their industry in the next three years. The French are most bullish at 70%, the Germans least so at 57%. The potential for unemployment to rise as more jobs are taken over by automation seems to be a concern shared across the board, with the highest in Germany (69%) and Netherlands (69%). Of respondents, 20% think the number of jobs created will be greater, 40% think it will be less. The anticipated net loss of jobs could come from a worry that employees are unlikely to reinvent themselves fast enough to survive the disruption. The biggest obstacles will be organizational resistance and skills. The survey shows a widespread concern that a lack of skills will be the biggest of obstacles in adopting new the technologies. This is why HR will be a game changer for workers going forward.

How HR can help

HR should have a role in understanding what the implications are of robotics on the workforce, says Andy Campbell, HCM strategy director at Oracle.

"We need to be involved in planning the workforce of the future that takes this into account. We need to think and plan for skills, capabilities and personal attributes required of this new workforce," he says. "We then need to consider how we put the correct new strategies in place to source, recruit, develop, and retain these talents. They may, for example, be located in other parts of the business. This requires good data and agile flexible, collaborative systems that facilitate change rather than inhibit innovation."

In other words, HR departments need to take a data-driven approach to advise its workforce on how to evolve to make sure they're not made obsolete when the robots finally do arrive.

For more information about how Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud can help workers stay one step ahead of the robots, read this.

This post is sponsored by Oracle HCM.