The contentious debates about robotics and automation in production work are mostly behind us, it seems. Workers in metalcasting and other operations are surely better off with automation devices performing dangerous or strenuous tasks – and the employers in those businesses can have more confidence and assurance about the outcome of the work being done. But those debates are worth some reflection now because they proved the importance and necessity of work to those individuals given those difficult assignments. Perhaps they didn’t like doing the work, but they recognized its importance and their own necessity to the results for themselves and the organization.
There is a shadow of that debate ongoing now, whether anyone has noticed it or not. Employers have essentially conceded the necessity of showing up. Offices across the country are mostly empty as workers log-in from home, zoom in to meetings, share virtual documents, and multitask their professional and personal activities in bursts of concentration and distraction. Then, they log off.
Workers are encouraged to fulfill checklists, not to undertake assignments and assume creative authority. A job is just a job, not an occupation or a profession.
Are there advantages to this arrangement? Sure. It’s perfectly feasible now for employers to land talent far afield from the area code of their offices, and the costs of maintaining that space is certainly less if no one is there.
For the workers, there are time and cost savings when commuting is not a requirement, and the lack of a fixed work schedule is appealing to people with responsibilities to families, etc. There may be a wider choice of employment opportunities to workers available for assignments but unable to be in a particular location.
But if manufacturers gained assurance by embracing automation, loosening attendance requirements for workers has some apparent costs that are likely to linger, and maybe to mount, and these seem certain to redefine how organizations are managed: How does a business develop and maintain loyalty among workers who may never be present, and may never actually meet? How do they emphasize shared goals? How do they track productivity, evaluate performance, and spot potential among individuals on a team that is dispersed?
These are organizational concerns and some best practices will surely be identified and modeled, but the structural changes that are happening in parallel to these changes are concerning too – and these concern more than employers and workers. Empty office spaces mean empty buildings. Many millions of square feet of commercial real estate has been converted for residential use in U.S. cities – but there are limits to the feasibility of such repurposing, and more vacant office space than there are developers willing to invest in the remodeling.
In Detroit, there is open speculation about demolishing some part of the Renaissance Center (four 40-story towers) because General Motors is downsizing its office requirements there. There are similar discussions about a 31-story tower in Minneapolis that is less than 25 years old. And pointing to the worst phase of this trend is the Los Angeles tower that became unfeasible to its developers before it was completed – and now stands as 49-story trophy to graffiti artists. Cities have fewer pedestrians, fewer shoppers and diners, and more despair on their streets and sidewalks. The end of collaborative work has undermined social mores.
“Creative destruction” is term used in economics discussions to describe unfortunate developments that no one could prevent but that may elicit future rewards. It’s a real concept but it’s unsatisfying because it does not resolve any problem, and it’s unprovable too because it relies on faith that our predicaments have solutions we cannot yet imagine.
What has been destroyed among most workers today is the sense that their very presence has value to the organization and is a contribution to better results. We will miss what has been lost, and we may never know why we let it happen to us.