Symposium on Future of Work held

PES University Bangalore organised a symposium on Future of Work on 5th Jan 2018 in association with BITES. Eminent speakers from various organisations who presented their views on the theme. Prof D. Jawahar, Pro-Chancellor of PES University, presided over the function. The Board for IT Education Standards is a non-profit society set up by the Karnataka Government, in association with IT industries and educational institutions, in order to enhance the quality of IT education and help build quality manpower for the IT industry. Future of Work presents a daunting landscape. It's a scenic route dotted with technologies like automation, AI and robotics that are determining the ways we work and meandering into Gig economy where everyone works virtually. There are several issues embedded within this theme. Raghu K Tallam, Executive director, EY spoke on future work place and the shape of things to come. He mentioned that pace of fourth industrial revolution is rapid and demographic replacement ratio is 2.1. He explained concept of S-curves with respect to automation. He added that complex problem solving, creativity, intelligence, collaboration with selves and skills is important for employees. Zubun Tafti, Associative director, fin-tech and payment transformations, PWC spoke on the fin-tech juggernaut and if the bankers would disappear in the future. He said that future of fin-tech lies in business centres focusing on market and adapting to new concepts and digitalising the economy and categorising the start-ups are critical. He added that Indian Financial Services industry are adopting fin-tech in four distinct modes, business capability or partnerships, product capability or partnerships, operation model replication, and equity ownership. He mentioned that incumbents are engaging fin-tech ecosystem through various methods. Prashanth Kaivar, AVP, Head of Supply Chain Management, TechM spoke on Industry 4.0 and will the robots rule the roost. He said that there is perception that Industry 4.0 is a small factory but it is more than that as there is confluence of technologies. According to him, with robots becoming part and parcel of life, by 2045, computational power of computers would surpass that of the combined computational power of humans and computers both. He mentioned instances of anticipatory shipping, done by Amazon which includes alertness, accessibility, decisiveness, swiftness, flexibility. Dr. Sunitha Maheshwari, Pediatric cardiologist, Chief dreamer, Teleradiology solutions, USA spoke on medical automation and the fear that doctors could loose their jobs to AI. She said imaging for chronic diseases, high speed and resolution images for analysis are on the rise. She felt that using technology to take doctors to places where it is needed is critical and auto detection of diseases during emergency rapid triage and early detection is required. She advised use of AI to boost the efficiency and effectiveness of doctors. MANOJ KUMAR, founding partner, Workplaceif spoke on digitalization and disruption of human capital management. He said that labour productivity is stagnating and with it productivity growth in computing power, algorithms and data abundance is taking place. He added that Computation of power and Virtual management of data are very significant. SUSHMA RAJAGOPALAN, CEO/MD, ITC Infotech spoke on unscrambling of IT businesses and what to look forward to. She said the most important question is “will there be enough jobs and also what kind of job roles, if it’s available?” She added the world is uncertain so we should have an understanding of what is required differently from us. She mentioned the 7S that a CEO has to bear in mind are Sensing, Speed, Simplicity, Sharing Economy, Systems, Scale and Specialism. She also spoke about Digitaligence and Innoruption. The audience comprised of industry professionals, academicians and students. They appreciated the overall concept, theme and presentations done by all the esteemed speakers.