VIDEO: The robot coffee table (or chair, or foot stool...)

Fading out at the end of the busy week and just about ready to shift into long, holiday weekend mode here in the USA and I wanted to wrap the week by sharing the coolest thing I saw online in a while. 

And no, it has nothing to do with SHRM or HRCI or HR certifications of any kind. Did that story jump the shark in about seventeen minutes or what?

This is about robots of course, and for a change it isn't about how robots are coming to take all of our jobs, and make us their servants, or how we puny humans are destined to be rendered obsolete my more efficient technologies. Check the video embedded below, (email and RSS subscribers will need to click through), to see an incredibly neat and clever potential application of robot technology called Roombots, a set of connected and complimentary components that can work together to help adapt your environment, surroundings, and everyday objects like chairs and tables to you and your needs.

Developed by scientists from the Biorobotics Laboratory at the École Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, these Roombots could be the precursors to a more fully automated, adaptive, and flexible set of solutions that have the potential to transform basic household elements like tables or flower pots.

Imagine having your table top to always be exactly at the right height for what you are doing, or having your plants and flowers re-position themselves to take advantage of sunlight or to get out of the rain.

It would be really cool to have a little personal Roombot squadron at your disposal don't you think?

What might you do with all that power?

I am thinking of something already: "Roomobots, fetch me a cold one - the weekend is underway!"

Have a great weekend!

The ever shrinking middle skilled workforce

If you want to get a cogent, simple summarization of what is going on in the labor market and for the diminishing opportunities and prospects for folks caught in the middle so to speak, take a look at these recent comments and observations from New York Federal Reserve Bank Chair William Dudley:

What Kinds of Jobs Have Been Created During the Recovery?

Firms often change the way they utilize workers and the mix of skills they employ during recessions and recoveries.  The weakening demand during recessions forces firms to look for new ways to be more efficient to cope with hard times.  These adjustments do not affect all workers equally.  Indeed, it’s what we typically think of as middle-skilled workers—for example, construction workers, machine operators and administrative support personnel—that are hardest hit during recessions.  Further, a feature of the Great Recession and indeed the prior two recessions, is that the middle-skill jobs that were lost don’t all come back during the recoveries that follow.  Instead, job opportunities have tended to shift toward higher- and lower-skilled workers.

As we’ll show, these same trends have played out in our region.  While there’s been a good number of both higher-skill and lower-skill jobs created in the region during the recovery, opportunities for middle-skilled workers have continued to shrink.

I believe it is important for us to highlight these job trends and to understand their implications for our region.  There have been significant and long-lasting changes to the nature of work.  As a result, many middle-skilled workers displaced during the recession are likely to find that their old jobs will never come back.  Furthermore, workers are increasingly facing higher skill requirements in order to land a good job.  These dynamics in the labor market present a host of challenges for the region to address.  However one thing is clear: workers will need more education, training and skills to take full advantage of the types of job opportunities being created in our region, as well as across the nation.

Lots to think about from NY Fed President Dudley's remarks, even if they are not surprising, it still seems that we (the big, society-encompassing we) are not doing enough or adequately preparing for this bifurcation in opportunity. The middle skilled jobs that Dudley is referring to were traditionally the majority of jobs in many small and midsize cities in America, and perhaps more importantly, the natural bridge from low-skilled and low paid work into higher skilled and naturally, better paid jobs. Even if an individual himself or herself could not make the leap from construction worker or administrative support into a managerial or exec role, chances were at least decent that their kids would be able to advance, even just a little further up the skill/pay ladder.

I certainly don't have the answers to this problem, but it does seem like better strategies are needed. The commonly cited approaches that call for increased business/community college partnerships for workforce training and development and an emphasis to students that jobs in skilled trades represent solid career opportunities seem valid, but what if via the combination of technology progress, outsourcing, and better tools for automation, most of these middle skilled jobs are simply never coming back?

What then? What if the middle skilled jobs continue to hollow out? What if we eventually become an economy comprised of lots and lots of low-skilled service workers and a relatively few (lucky) high-skilled knowledge and creative workers on the high end?

And what happens when the chasm between these two ends keeps growing larger and larger all the time?

The machine gets its 'Seat at the table'

At the risk of having a $100 fine/mandatory donation slapped down on me from Professor Matt Stollak, I felt compelled to crack out the (tired) 'Seat at the table' line, the often-repeated metaphoric goal or target for HR leaders, and that is still referenced by many a conference speaker, when I caught this interesting piece from Betabeat - V.C. Firm Names Robot to Board of Directors.

You can probably tell where I am going with this take just from the title of the Betabeat piece, but in case you'd like some details, here is the gist of the story:

In case you needed more proof that all our jobs will one day be occupied by robots, a Hong Kong V.C. firm has just named an artificial intelligence tool to its board of directors. The company’s also insisting the tool will be treated as an “equal” to the other board members.

A press release from Aging Analytics UK, a company that conducts research on biotechnology and regenerative medicine, made two announcements this morning: first, that they’ve launched an new A.I. tool called VITAL (Validating Investment Tool for Advancing Life Sciences); and second, that they’ve licensed VITAL to Hong Kong V.C. firm Deep Knowledge Ventures, where the tool will become an “equal member of its Board of Directors.”

VITAL uses machine learning to predict which life science companies will make for successful investments, the press release explains. That’s why it’ll be of use to Deep Knowledge Ventures, which “routinely invest[s] in both private and public companies specializing in biotechnology, regenerative medicine, oncology, drug discovery, bioinformatics and personalized medicine,” according to their website.

On the (board) meetings investors will firstly discuss the analytical reviews made by VITAL. All the decisions on investing will be made strictly after VITAL provides it’s data. We say that VITAL has been acknowledged as an equal member of the board of directors, because it’s opinion (actually, the analysis) will be considered as probably the most important one. So basically yes, it will be incorporated into meetings.

Awesome, right? The robot, or really not so much a robot, but a smart machine with a bunch of algorithms is going to be an 'equal member' of the board of directors, and have its 'voice' heard at the ACTUAL TABLE, (no word if it will really have a seat as well, but so what?).

You could just let this story go as kind of a goof or a publicity stunt, but if you take maybe five minutes to think about it, it once again validates everything we think we know about why so frequently HR leaders are not equal members and participants in the organization's strategic planning processes.

VITAL, the robot director, only applies data and logic in making its recommendations. It has no inherent bias. It is not even aware of how the other directors perceive its abilities, even the crusty old directors that 'Don't get all this newfangled technology'. It is not scared to issue its advice, since robots probably can't get scared, and it 'knows' it is operating from facts and a kind of defensible set of processes. VITAL isn't out to 'prove' anything to skeptics, or people with 'business' sense.

VITAL actually sounds like the perfect Director, when you think about it. 

CHART OF THE DAY: What age group has employment rising faster than population?

Quick hit for a busy Tuesday - I wanted to share a chart (and the link to a few more interesting charts), on population growth, labor force growth, and employment growth between 2008 and 2014 for one specific category of workers - those aged 65 and up.

First, here is the chart from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis, then some observations and free commentary:

Apologies if the chart resolution isn't great, but hopefully you can still make out the key pieces of data. Essentially, while the population growth of those aged 65+ is really high (about 20% of an increase in this group since 2008), the rates of increase in labor force participation and employment are even higher (about 37% and 35% respectively).

Additionally, this is the only age group where the labor force and overall employment rates are outpacing population growth. For example, 16-24 year olds have seen their ranks increase by about 4%, but employment for that group has declined about 6%.

I know I have posted a few times about the general increase in age of the workforce, and the challenges and opportunities this presents to organizations, but it is probably worth thinking about perhaps more frequently than before. Older workers are often overlooked, and can present great sources of experience, insight, and even value, as any folks in this cohort do probably realize that they might be outside of their prime earning years. Also, many will be motivated by the opportunity to share their knowledge and give back as it were to their less experienced workers - which is exactly the kind of on the job learning and mentoring that the next generation desires.  Lastly, you probably don't have to be that concerned, (if at all), with ongoing development and career pathing with this group - they have likely ran most of their career journeys already.

Anyway, this will have to be the last time I go on again about the aging workforce, I think the point has been beaten into submission. Unless I am still blogging say 20 years from now, where I will be screaming about the value of the older workers as far as I can still shout.

Happy Tuesday.

FOLLOW-UP: Culture Can't Be Wrong

I was doing some spring cleaning this past weekend, (on a mid-May day that was so cold it hardly felt like Spring), and discovered in a not-touched-in-a-long-time pile of books not only a rare first edition print copy of original The 8 Man Rotation book on Sports and HR, but also one of my favorites of the last few years, Chuck Klosterman's excellent book titled 'IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas'. 

On Saturday evening when resting up from my busy day of charitable volunteer work, rescuing stray animals, and helping little old ladies cross the road, I decided to thumb through and re-read some of the Klosterman book, as it is a collection of essays, it is kind of easy to simply jump in at any part that seems interesting. As he is a pop culture observer and critic, many of the essays are about, well, pop culture, and when re-reading an essay titled 'Cultural Betrayal', I had two thoughts. One, was I really get this idea and it makes sense. And the second -  I am pretty sure I blogged about this essay at some point. The fact that I had dog-eared the page and underlined a couple of sentences in the piece was another giveaway.

So I checked the blog archives and sure enough I did riff on the'Cultural Betrayal' essay with a blog post titled after a concept from the piece, 'Culture Can't Be Wrong', which ran back in February 2010. It was a short piece about cultural elitism, mainly framed through this idea, (which was kind of common in our little HR space back in 2010): that somehow the folks that were actively blogging, tweeting, patting each other on the back for how 'with it' we all liked to think we were somehow 'better' than the ignorant or lazy folks that were not on the bandwagon with us. There is also a solid take on Farmville.

The blog post from 2010 also got several really interesting and well-thought out comments, (which on this blog anyway almost never happens anymore, despite there being at least 4x or 5x more readers today than there was in 2010. That is a topic for another day.).

So for this mid-May day in 2014 I am going to run the piece again, mainly because it is interesting to me to see what we were talking about almost four-and-a-half years ago, and two, since despite a couple of the specific references being a little dated, I think the main points still hold up. Here is the full post from 2010:

Culture Can't Be Wrong - February 26, 2010

On the way to an event last week I read Chuck Klosterman's excellent book titled 'IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas'. 

One of the articles 'Cultural Betrayal', contained the observation 'Culture can't be wrong'. The main point of the piece is the idea that if 25 Million people watch 'American Idol' each week, and you can't see the point and despise the show, that the 25 Million people are not 'wrong'. You may not share their tastes or affinity for pop singing, or karaoke-bar style performances, but in a way you are the one that is 'wrong'.

What does all this have to do with technology, workforce, or anything remotely near what we typically cover on this site?

Not much probably, but let me take a crack at what I see as the connection, a take on technology and perhaps even social media elitism. At times in the new media echo chamber there is a kind of self and mutual reverential society happening.  Like we are all in some cool, elite clique and boy the folks that have not jumped on board, or don't 'get it' are somehow not in our cool kids group.

So here is my take:

You are not 'better' or smarter than your buddy who has never heard of Twitter while you are sitting feeling cool about hitting the 1,000, 2,000 or whatever follower mark that is currently consuming your thoughts.

You are not of more value to society simply because you refuse to play 'Farmville' on Facebook. Something like 60 million people play Farmville.  Some of those people are your friends, co-workers, nurses, firefighters, teachers, and coaches.  60 million people!

How many of your suppliers, customers, and shareholders are in that group? How many of the people that can directly and impactfully influence your organization's success are in a group that participates in a game that you may have shown public disdain for?

Failing to understand that group shows a marked lack of awareness and appreciation for what is actually happening in the world. Ignoring that group will result in missed opportunity.  Insulting that group (and you know some of you do) could be a disastrous error.

Stop acting like a smart-aleck social media smartypants.  Don't be an elitist. Don't be that person.  Don't.

Culture can't be wrong.

--------------------------------------------------------------

What did you think? Does this still apply in 2014? Are we still caught up in our little echo chamber? 

Have a great week!