Skills, training and redeployment
What the evidence says about retraining the people already on the floor, which is the manifesto's central claim and one we should be held to.
12 works. Metadata and abstracts from OpenAlex, harvested 2026-08-23. We have not summarized, graded or characterized this research ourselves, and the abstracts below are the authors' own.
The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Workers’ Skills: Upskilling and Reskilling in Organisations
Aim/Purpose: This paper examines the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on professional skills in organizations and explores strategies to address the resulting challenges. Background: The rapid integration of AI across various sectors is automating tasks and reducing cognitive workload, leading to increased productivity but also raising concerns about job displacement. Successfully adapting to this transformation requires organizations to implement new working models and develop strategies for upskilling and reskilling their workforce. Methodology: This review analyzes recent research and practice on AI's impact on human skills in organizations. We identify key trends in how AI is reshaping professional competencies and highlight the crucial role of transversal skills in this evolving landscape. The paper also discusses effective strategies to support organizations...
Deskilling, Upskilling, and Reskilling: a Case for Hybrid Intelligence
Advances in AI technology affect knowledge work in diverse fields, including healthcare, engineering, and management. Although automation and machine support can increase efficiency and lower costs, it can also, as an unintended consequence, deskill workers, who lose valuable skills that would otherwise be maintained as part of their daily work. Such deskilling has a wide range of negative effects on multiple stakeholders -- employees, organizations, and society at large. This essay discusses deskilling in the age of AI on three levels - individual, organizational and societal. Deskilling is furthermore analyzed through the lens of four different levels of human-AI configurations and we argue that one of them, Hybrid Intelligence, could be particularly suitable to help manage the risk of deskilling human experts. Hybrid Intelligence system design and implementation can explicitly take...
Education and Training for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Within the context of the 4th Industrial Revolution as an overall paradigm change, organization and work processes must switch together with automation following and real-time control. This applies to the contents of labor and to the interaction and connection between human and technology. Up to this point, there are only a few empirical studies about how digitized, decentralized and closely connected production system with "Cyber-Physical-Systems" change the task and and competence profiles in the workplace. One outcome will be that intelligent workpieces will manage their way into production themselves. Depending on the implementation level of Industry 4.0 in companies, vocational education and training for the workforce is highly relevant and the vocational systems have to respond to the needs and expectations of the new technological challenges. Successful reactions of the...
Skills Requirements for the European Machine Tool Sector Emerging from Its Digitalization
The machine tool industry, which is the starting point of all the metal producing activities, is presently undergoing rapid and continuous changes as a result of the fourth industrial revolution Industry 4.0. Manufacturing models are profoundly transforming with emerging digitalization. Smart technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), digital twin, allow the machine tool companies to optimize processes, increase efficiency and reduce waste through a new phase of automation. These technologies, as well, enable the machine tool producers to reach the aim of creating products with improved performance, extended life, high reliability that are eco-efficient. Therefore, Industry 4.0 could be perceived as an invaluable opportunity for the machine tool sector, only if the sector has a competent workforce capable of handling the implementation of new...
Education 4.0 Technologies, Industry 4.0 Skills and the Teaching of English in Malaysian Tertiary Education
Unprecedented changes are happening in the way the world works; traditional jobs are being replaced by new ones that need critical skills for workers of the future. Enter the era of 'Industry 4.0'. In this era, knowledge and skills are paramount for one to stay relevant and remain competitive in the job market. Terms like 'reskilling' and 'upskilling' reflect the kind of changes that are happening. Thus, it is only natural that the realm of education follows suit, with the construct of 'Education 4.0'. This research article takes a broadly neutral view of Industry 4.0 and Education 4.0, although both constructs are criticized by certain quarters. In truth, the increasing automation of manual labor and remarkable growth in and expansion of technological developments, all point to an uncertain future for the next generation of future workers. Strategies must be drafted, and initiatives be...
Building Capabilities for Future of Work in the Gig Economy
Many organisations are agile in their growth plans and scale up their operations to achieve exponential growth. The most valuable asset in today’s and tomorrow’s economy is human capital, and organisations invest in reskilling and upskilling their workforce. Automation at work, combined with the global economic challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic situation has lead the workforce to lose their jobs at an accelerated pace, and the trend is expected to continue. The ongoing shift in the division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms might displace almost 85 million jobs worldwide in the next 5 years, as per the World Economic Forum (WEF). The world of work is changing with a multi-generational workforce and changing employment models with more flexibility. The location is no more a constraint to acquire capable talent. The gig economy is booming, and today’s workers...
Industrial Robots and Regional Fertility in European Countries
In this study, we examine whether the long-term structural changes in the labour market, driven by automation, affect fertility. The adoption of industrial robots is used as a proxy for these changes. It has tripled since the mid-1990s in the EU, tremendously changing the conditions of participating in the labour market. On the one hand, new jobs are created, benefitting largely the highly skilled workers. On the other hand, the growing turnover in the labour market and changing content of jobs induce fears of job displacement and make workers continuously adjust to new requirements (reskill, upskill, increase work efforts). The consequences of these changes are particularly strong for the employment and earning prospects of low and middle-educated workers. Our focus is on six European countries: Czechia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK. We link regional data on fertility and...
Are Robots stealing jobs? Empirical evidence from 10 developing countries
This research study aims, therefore, to examine the impacts of the adoption of new technology on jobs and employment in developing countries. Using ordered-probit regression model estimations from a survey of multinational firms in 22 industrial sectors from 10 selected developing countries, our results show that the probability of employment is found to decrease if a firm considers it important to adopt new technology. A relationship between the introduction of robots and the disappearance of jobs was found among firms in Brazil, China, India, Nigeria, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and Turkey. Sector-wise, information technology (IT) seems to be the only sector in which a positive relationship was found between higher employment within firms and new technology adoption. Other sectors exhibited an opposite relationship (higher technology adoption causes a decrease in...
Robotics in Manufacturing: A Review of Advances in Automation and Workforce Implications
The integration of robotics in manufacturing processes has undergone significant advancements, reshaping the landscape of industrial production and introducing transformative changes. This review explores the latest developments in robotics within the manufacturing sector, shedding light on the technological breakthroughs and their implications on the workforce. The recent surge in robotics adoption in manufacturing has been driven by the pursuit of increased efficiency, precision, and cost-effectiveness. From traditional robotic arms to cutting-edge collaborative robots (cobots) that work alongside human operators, the manufacturing industry has witnessed a paradigm shift. Advanced robotic systems equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms enable adaptive and autonomous decision-making, further enhancing their capabilities. Automation in manufacturing...
Assessing the impact of technological change on similar occupations: Implications for employment alternatives
BACKGROUND: The fast-changing labor market highlights the need for an in-depth understanding of occupational mobility impacted by technological change. However, we lack a multidimensional classification scheme that considers similarities of occupations comprehensively, which prevents us from predicting employment trends and mobility across occupations. This study fills the gap by examining employment trends based on similarities between occupations. METHOD: We first demonstrated a new method that clusters 756 occupation titles based on knowledge, skills, abilities, education, experience, training, activities, values, and interests. We used the Principal Component Analysis to categorize occupations in the Standard Occupational Classification, which is grouped into a four-level hierarchy. Then, we paired the occupation clusters with the occupational employment projections provided by the...
Adapting to digital transformation: Determinants of training motivation in response to digital automation among workers in six EU countries
Research background: The increasing automation of work tasks is transforming labour markets, creating both challenges and opportunities for workers. Reskilling and upskilling through training are essential for maintaining employability in the rapidly changing digital economy. While automation may complement certain job roles, it substitutes others, leading to skills mismatches and heightened concerns about job security. Previous studies have provided inconsistent findings regarding the influence of automation on workers' training motivations, lacking detailed distinctions between task complementarity and substitution effects, as well as differentiations in types of job insecurity. Purpose of the article: This article examines the key determinants of workers' motivation to participate in training in response to automation. It specifically addresses the gaps in literature by clearly...
A processual approach to skill changes in digital automation: The case of the platform economy in the service sector
We introduce the “processual approach” to skill changes in the current wave of digital automation, which imposes comprehensive and complex impacts on skills. The approach conceptualizes work as a set of processes, each consisting of a sequence of events. In each event, a worker and/or machine make judgments and take actions to move to the next event. The processual approach asks whether and how machines influence workers' judgments or actions during each event and interrupt or transform relationships between judgments and actions. The approach enables micro-to-middle-range, inductive theorization of skill changes. To further refine the approach and demonstrate how to apply the approach, we study the case of taxi and ride-hailing, finding that service skill changes emphasize the repositioning and refocusing of skills and the interruption of workers' micro-adaptations rather than the...
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