Podcast May 30, 2025

Navigating the Automated Future: Beyond Job Displacement to Workforce Transformation

By: Jeremy Rotenberg

May 30, 2025 | 5 Minute Read

The rise of automation in warehouses and distribution centers often sparks a significant concern: automation job displacement. It’s a topic that can create anxiety among the workforce and uncertainty for businesses. However, as supply chain professionals, we see a more nuanced picture – one where automation leads not just to change, but to evolution and opportunity. The key lies in how businesses approach and manage this technological shift.

The conversation around automation often focuses on the “before”: the design, the implementation, the justification based on labor and space savings, or throughput improvements. But what about the “after”? What becomes of your most valuable asset – your human capital – when they find themselves working alongside sophisticated automated systems?

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From Displacement to Collaboration: The Rise of “Cobots”

The narrative that automation simply means removing a workforce isn’t the full story. While some tasks may be automated, the reality is often a transformation of roles and the creation of new opportunities. Think less about robots replacing humans and more about “cobots” – a collaborative environment where people and automated systems work together.

This shift isn’t just about new machinery; it’s a fundamental change in how a company operates, grows, and defines its roles. It touches every individual within the organization. For instance, a forklift operator might transition to become a “cobot operator” or a station operator, overseeing automated palletizers. This new role, while different, involves managing sophisticated systems, troubleshooting, and handling exceptions to ensure smooth operations. The nature of the job becomes more advanced, with greater responsibility over the system’s overall throughput.

Mitigating Fear, Fostering Growth: The Human Element of Automation

Successfully implementing automation is a massive change management project. Without open communication, it can breed fear and anxiety. This is why the number one piece of advice for any company venturing into large-scale automation is to engage the workforce as early as possible.

Here’s how to turn potential apprehension into active participation:

  • Early and Transparent Communication: Bring your employees into the conversation when you have a concrete concept and initial numbers. This transparency helps reduce anxiety and allows the workforce to see the upcoming changes as opportunities.
  • Make Your Workforce a Partner: They need to understand the vision and embrace the next generation of warehousing. This isn’t just about informing them; it’s about orienting them towards their new or evolved roles.
  • Involve Human Resources: HR should be an integral part of the automation project team. They play a crucial role in identifying new roles, facilitating reskilling, and managing the human aspect of the transition.
  • Reskilling and Upskilling: Many current employees are willing and capable of learning the new skills required in an automated environment. Equipment providers are often happy to help train your existing team, who may find unexpected new career paths in maintenance or system operation. Remember the transition from paper-based systems to computers? The workforce adapted then, and they can adapt now, often with surprising technical aptitude.
  • Union Collaboration: In unionized environments, it’s equally critical to bring union representatives in early, as soon as a tangible concept exists. This fosters partnership and allows them to see and plan for the opportunities automation can bring to their members.

Automation: A Catalyst for New Skills and Expanded Roles

It’s true that automation often introduces the need for new, more technical roles, particularly in maintaining the electrical, mechanical, and computer systems that drive these advanced operations. However, this doesn’t automatically mean wholesale replacement. Many existing employees can be retrained and upskilled to fill these evolving positions.

Companies investing in significant automation are typically doing so with growth in mind. These systems are designed to support increased capacity, often for years to come, and can operate 24/7. This expanded operational capability still requires people to support and manage the systems. Historically, technological transformations, like the shift to e-commerce (itself enabled by technology), have created entirely new avenues of opportunity and job growth.

The Future is Collaborative

The conversation about automation job displacement needs to be reframed. While some job functions will undoubtedly change, the overarching impact, when managed proactively, is one of workforce transformation and upskilling. By engaging employees early, investing in training, and fostering a collaborative environment, companies can navigate the shift to automation successfully. This approach not only mitigates fears but also builds a more skilled, adaptable, and future-ready workforce.

The longer you wait to begin these crucial conversations and involve your team, the more challenging the transition will be. An open, ongoing discussion is key to unlocking the full potential of automation, not just for your operations, but for your people too.


LIDD is here to help! Reach out at [email protected] or contact Stephan directly to ask him your questions.


 

[00:00:00.000] It’s the end of the week. Yes. And I’m really happy to have you sitting next to me, Stefan. Thank you. I’m not even sure what inspired this, but something in your head. I mean, I know you’re dealing with a lot of companies who are looking at some large scale automation projects. And I don’t know, you just started chatting about thinking about… We spend too much time thinking about the before automation. Why How are we going to design it? The implementation? And then you brought up with us this idea of, well, let’s think about what happens after. And in particular, the impact on a labor force that undergoes a massive automation project or transformation of their operations.

[00:00:50.600] The so-called human capital.

[00:00:53.060] Human capital, which every annual report, the letter from every president of every publicly traded company, what is their number one asset? The human. Absolutely. So how are humans affected when they now find themselves working in an automated environment?

[00:01:12.970] Well, I think they got to be brought in the project as soon as possible. I think they’re part of the project. And that’s why… I think that’s the reason why we’re not using robots so much anymore. The term we’re using cobot? Because they work together.

[00:01:29.390] It’s a collaboration.

[00:01:30.590] Absolutely. So it’s a teamwork. It’s a team effort. Well, we know the end result. But if you look at it in a broader, in a bigger picture, it’s a team effort. It’s a company effort. It’s going to change. It’s going to change who you are, the way you do things, how you’re going to grow, everything within the company. So forget about the automation by itself. It’s going to touch every single human in your company.

[00:02:01.770] When implementing automation, it’s a massive change management project, and it’s something that without good open communication, can inspire enormous fear and anxiety on the part of a workforce. Yes. Because, and that’s where your cobot comment is so interesting, you will send people into fear that automation means removing of a workforce, which really isn’t true. Well, it’s true.

[00:02:32.970] Yes. But at the same time, it creates opportunity for others. So others that are in that human force that you have today, because some are going to see it as an opportunity to become a technician, to become an automation expert, to become more of a manager that does multitasking, because it’s not so much about doing in action anymore. It’s about looking at the whole system. So some jobs are just going to change. They’re not going to be there anymore. So you’re going to be able to reskill your people. And some of them are going to see it as a major improvement in their quality.

[00:03:18.000] Right. So there’s… I guess the first thing I want to say before we go down that road just yet, because what is interesting is, of course, no company is making massive investments investments like this with a zero or negative growth rate projected into the future. So it really isn’t about… Yes, you are justifying these investments on a certain amount of labor savings, certain amount of space savings, and a certain amount of throughput per hour improvement.

[00:03:50.280] Productivity, yeah.

[00:03:50.940] But there’s still an enormous workforce that’s left. And then, as you’re just saying, that workforce, the nature of their job changes.

[00:04:00.740] So whether you keep the same workers or you get new ones, but the skillset needs to change, right? So it’s very different. So your lift truck operators are now going to be co-bots. Operators, and they’re going to be station operators. So they’re going to operate a palletizer, an automatic… Because an automatic palletizer doesn’t run by itself.

[00:04:27.250] Right.

[00:04:27.560] I mean, one, yes. Well, I mean, Now, one worker can now operate many palletizer. So here you go. So he’s now a palettizer operator. While before that, he was a palettizer. Right.

[00:04:42.960] Because there’s a couple of things there. First, the idea that every input into an automated system is perfect, not true. Absolutely not. So there’s a lot of troubleshooting to keep the system moving along. And then there’s just managing. There’s all sorts of exceptions and things to deal with to keep it running. So there’s that. So now, like you just said, I was a reach truck driver, putting pallets away, grabbing pallets and that. Now I’m suddenly, I got a lot of screens I got monitors. And so the nature of my job has just become more sophisticated. Yeah, absolutely. With a higher responsibility over the system’s throughput.

[00:05:30.170] Well, we, the young guys of distribution, went through the changes of working with paper and moving from paper to computer systems. To computer. And there was a change, and it brought in productivity. It brought in… And has anybody lost their job?

[00:05:51.380] No. In fact, here’s an interesting statistic, at least both in Canada and United States. Warehouse work as a % of all work across across the economy has grown. Now, part of that’s e-commerce. But then think about that. That e-commerce is enabled by a technology that is also derived from what you just talked about, that transformation. And it’s always the case. These transformations create whole new worlds of opportunity, including for, as we said, those forklift drivers and the folks doing one job now transform into another job.

[00:06:32.710] Well, the capacity of growing. When you put an automation system in, you always forecast the next seven years, the next 10 years, but hoping you’re going to outgrow those forecasts. You can because now you have a system that supports it, that can work 24/7. Now you They need the people to support that system. And that’s where the human comes into play.

[00:07:06.610] So it’s not just… So let’s say there’s… What did we just say? We’ve said, look, you got to engage everybody early on so that it reduce anxiety. But also you’re doing that to start orienting them to their new job. Having said that, there is a new injection of a new type of laborer that is coming in or worker, of course, which is a very technical type of worker, right? Who’s doing maintenance, and that maintenance is both on the physical aspects of the electrical, mechanical aspects, and the computer systems that are now required to run these things. Yeah.

[00:07:47.730] But you’d be surprised how many of the people you have today will be willing to learn. And you know what? The largest all of If you talk to any equipment provider, they’ll tell you, Bring people in when we start doing the proof of concept, and we’ll teach them. We’ll teach them, and you know what? They’ll be interested in moving from a picking position to even the maintenance, which they never thought of before. But suddenly it’s a new opportunity to really give themselves skills that also will be transportable in their careers.

[00:08:31.670] It’s so interesting what you just said because it reminds me back to the moving from paper to paperless. And towards the end of that era of moving to paperless, and I know there are people who are still on paper there, but you guys are real dinosaurs. But at the end of that process, the thing that would be compelling to everybody when they think their workforce can’t adapt to this, I’d be like, have you watched them on their iPhone, on their smartphones? They can do lizard-like things. My daughter, when she was eight, could run my phone better than I could. Probably still today. Definitely still today. But I take your point in the sense that these folks can actually take on these new technical skills that are required, especially bring them in early, and then you invest in retraining.

[00:09:32.250] I think you have to bring your human resources department in as part of the team in an automation project because they’ll be as involved as operations are because you’re going to need new people. And not only that is that you have to factor it in. We always see we look at the payback and we look at labor against automation, and then But how are you going to get those employees in two years, three years, four years from now is also part of that calculation. And they’re just harder to get. So when you have factor all that in, it changes the projects.

[00:10:20.950] Interesting. So what is your… I mean, your number one advice to anyone going down this would be engage the workforce early. Absolutely. When you’re dealing with a unionized environment, do you have any additional advice?

[00:10:36.760] You have to bring them in as well. You have to bring them in as soon as you have a concept, as soon as you have a concept. I won’t say when you start thinking about it, but when you have a concept, something concrete, you start getting numbers. And well, that’s when you have to bring them in because it shows transparency. And And I mean, again, they will see opportunity for the best.

[00:11:06.150] You’ve got to make that workforce a partner to you in this project. They have to understand, you have to eliminate that anxiety and let them embrace what this next generation of warehousing looks like. Absolutely. A hundred %. I mean, I don’t know. Is there anything else you want to say?

[00:11:27.580] Hey, enjoy your projects and keep on talking. It’s an open discussion, and you got to bring as many players in the discussion as you can.

[00:11:40.870] And as soon as it makes sense.

[00:11:42.260] And as soon as you can.

[00:11:43.540] The longer you wait, the harder it’s going to get. Absolutely. Which is true of every aspect of an automation project.

[00:11:49.710] Pretty much. Yes.

[00:11:51.200] All right. Well, Stefan, thank you for this. This is great.

[00:11:53.520] Yeah, thanks to you. All right. Okay.

[00:11:55.630] Have a good weekend. You, too.

 

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