ANZ Banking Group plan to add 100 'robot workers' next year to replace low skilled jobs
Back in August we reported that the ﻿ANZ Banking Group and Westpac were among some of the large corporations that were trialling robotic technology to automate back office and human resource jobs. Following the trial, ANZ's﻿ General Manager of Group Hubs, Simen Munter, said the company plans to deploy 100 'robot workers' next year in its finance, human resources and mortgage processing departments. Although they will replace the jobs of some low skilled jobs, Munter said that the pilot programme showed that employees who﻿ worked﻿ with the 'robot workers' had improved job satisfaction.﻿

"It is about smart people working with smart robots," Mr Munter told The Australian Financial Review.

"It is not driven by the cost saving, it is about doing away with mundane, repetitive tasks and driving consistency, it is not robots versus humans," he said.

Mr Munter said their pilot program showed that employees who were impacted had improved job satisfaction.

"It is not about job loss but job engagement," he said. "People are really concerned about how it sits with the people doing those jobs at the moment but what we see is that for roles where we are using automation we see a massive uplift in engagement from those people because they are seeing their jobs getting better," he said.

ANZ's general manager of group hubs Simen Munter says there is a tremendous amount of work robots can do. Wayne Taylor

"A lot of people are suspicious but there is a tremendous amount of work which we don't need to do anymore and no one is regretting those advancements."

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Impact on labour market significant

The report management advisory firm Mindfields concludes that cost savings by using intelligent software that learns on the job would be "dramatic" and the impact on low skilled white collar workers will be "significant" but that people could be re-skilled in implementing, managing and maintaining robots among other jobs.

"The expected cost savings are dramatic and will be hard to ignore, but RPA [Robotics and Process Automation] will have a significant impact on labour markets, leading to a change in hiring strategy and the mix of staffing required," the report said.

"There will be a shift from hiring low-skilled resources to more qualified professionals who will benefit from having experience in disruptive technology, domains including automation, process improvement, governance and compliance cloud, mobility, analytics and social media," the report said.

Mindfields managing director Mohit Sharma says Uber shows technology can grow markets. Ben Rushton

"Staff reduction strategies will also be required where staff members are not able to be trained for other roles."

But director of Mindfields, Mohit Sharma, argued disruptive examples liked ride-sharing app Uber showed that technology can grow a market.

"Technology has always made human life more comfortable and releases human bandwidth for more productive use," he said. "Uber is a good example of automation. It has no call centre and it enhanced cab markets in San Francisco from $200 million to $1 billon."