What about jobs?

Deutsche Bank’s chief executive John Cryan has warned that many of the jobs held by human beings in the company may soon be replaced by robots.

Background

Automation and better technology have been labelled as the main culprits for future unemployment. This is because robots and automation will be able to do the jobs that were previously held by human beings.

In 2017, research firm PwC conducted a study that revealed that countries across the world will begin losing jobs to automation. The study noted that in the next 15 years, 40 percent of jobs in the U.S. may be vulnerable to automation and robots. In the same time frame, 35% of jobs in Germany could be replaced by automation and 30% of jobs in UK will become vulnerable. In Japan, 21% of jobs will become vulnerable to robots and automation.

Developing nations like India with a growing labor force will also face a massive challenge in the years ahead. According to research by human resources (HR) solutions firm PeopleStrong, by 2021 nearly a quarter of people in India will be losing their jobs to automation. “These job cuts due to automation will not happen immediately, but the impact will become prominent by 2020. The change has started, with companies introducing bots for customer service, managing warehouses, etc.,” said Pankaj Bansal, co-founder and chief executive officer of PeopleStrong.

Analysis

Deutsche Bank AG is a German banking and financial services company with over 100,000 employees from across the world. The bank has a presence in over 70 countries with a large footprint especially in Europe and the Americas as well as emerging markets like India.

The bank had already signaled that it will be streaming its operations in 2015. As part of its five-year restructuring plan, it had announced that it will be cutting 9,000 of its 100,000 direct employees. In addition, 6,000 of its 30,000 indirectly employed contractors would also be let go.

At the time, John Cryan, Co-Chief Executive Officer said, “In April, we announced Strategy 2020. Since joining the Management Board in July, I have been working together with my colleagues to draw up plans to stabilise the bank and to turn around its long-term performance. Sadly, this also means closing some of our branches and country locations, and reducing some of our front-office and infrastructure staff too.”

Deutsche Bank’s chief executive John Cryan in 2017 has warned that robots will be taking over many of the jobs within the company. He asked colleagues to embrace their “revolutionary spirit” as employees for the bank already working “like robots” begin to be replaced by actual robots. He said, “In our bank we have people doing work like robots. Tomorrow we will have robots behaving like people. It doesn’t matter if we as a bank will participate in these changes or not, it is going to happen. The truthful answer is we won’t need as many people. In our banks we have people behaving like robots doing mechanical things, tomorrow we’re going to have robots behaving like people.”

Assessment

As we had predicted earlier automation poses a global challenge to governments across the world. It will be able to eradicate human error and will cost much lesser than human labor expenses.  Nations like India with a growing population will especially have to address these problems much sooner than expected.