A3 - Association for Advancing Automation’s Post

Transcript

AI and data science isn't really just kind of a buzzword. It really is having an impact across all aspects of this industry, and I think it's only going to continue to grow. Obviously, it's a key focus for so many companies and it's a key focus for so many customers. How can AI and machine learning and big data and data science, how can this change how we work and what we produce? And the challenge I think that the automation industry is going to face is everybody is becoming aware that these roles are going to be key. Do a lot of business models going forward. Hi, I'm Alex Coleman, I'm a Threes market Research analyst and today I'll be talking about our workforce report which is available now from our bookstore. A through market Intelligence put together this report in collaboration with our partners over at Interact Analysis and we had the opportunity to go out and survey and interview members of the A through membership all the way across the line system integrators, OEM's, everybody involved with the automation industry. And so it's like I mentioned a really comprehensive. Look at these automation challenges gathered from data provided by key members really important figures in the industry took the time to speak with us. And so that's one of the things I think that makes a three grade is US sitting at this intersection of so many key areas of the automation industry and being able to use that position to generate this valuable data for members. Our workforce report is taking a look at all of the issues affecting the automation workforce we cover everything from the initial hiring and the. Initial skills that you might be looking for in an entry level employee all the way up through upskilling your current workforce and retaining all the way up through executives. So I think it's a really good survey of all of the issues that are affecting the members of this industry. You know, they're seeing workforce challenges and we're taking a look at how you can address those. One of the things that we had heard from our membership was that they were facing workforce challenges and the idea behind generating this report was let's take a look and see what strategies are working and what strategies might not be working when it comes to addressing. Hiring, upskilling, retaining employees, what's out there that's kind of the best practices and what can everybody adopt to kind of provide a rising tide for all the members. The salesman side of me wants to say that this report is for everyone. And I really think there is value for everyone in this report because like I said, it covers all aspects of kind of the employee life cycle. But really one of the key takeaways I think would be for HR and executives and upper level. Management, because this really speaks to the issues that you're facing with your workforce. It covers the key strategies that you can use to identify any problem areas before they become problems. And it takes a forward-looking approach to some of the challenges that we see coming up. You know, everybody's aware that the workforce might be aging, that some of these skills might be more valuable than ever, and trying to identify those areas and figure out how to best approach them makes this report really valuable for HR. Executives and upper level management. So we decided to prioritize the workforce report partially based on member feedback. That's I think one of the areas that really sets a three market intelligence apart from kind of a more generic market intelligence offering is we listen to our members and we're going out and trying to craft the information that's useful to them. And as I mentioned, I think market intelligence was a bit privileged to have access to all of these great members who contributed their insights and what they were seeing out in the real world there to really make this report kind of besting. Class for this purpose, if you're in the automation industry, this report really hits and identifies the areas that you need to know about. Really the key core strength of this report over other generic workforce reports is that we are laser focused on the automation industry. Obviously that's a threes, you know key focus and that blood through to the report where we look at the specific job roles, the specific skills unique to the automation industry that are presenting challenges and compared to like a more. Generic report, we're not just saying ohh, you know, software is in demand. We're looking at these skills and the programming languages and the specific software roles that might be challenging the higher four within automation. So that I think really sets it apart is this very specific focus on the key factors affecting the automation industry. So we've got a ton of detail in this report. It's 44 pages long and we take a specific look at what these roles are within the automation industry across a threes, you know, key focus areas. And so we really go into a lot of detail in this report, but from a broader level, I can kind of say that some of the key issues are really keeping skills relevant and hiring for specific skills and attracting that talent that might be coming under pressure from competing industries. For example, AI and machine learning engineers or data engineers. Those are roles that have kind of a cross shoppable talent and for the automation industry in particular, looking at being able to consistently attract and retain that talent. Is a key priority for us. One of the things that we saw was that participants are worried about an aging workforce. A majority of them thought that over the next five years their workforce is going to get older and that has a lot of knock on issues that might have implications for what they think is an ideal work life balance. That has implications for the kind of future generation of workers needing to receive those skills and that hands on learning experience from older employees. And that also has some challenges with. All of the aspects of hiring and retaining, if you've got older employees, they might have higher pay expectations, they might have a variety of different priorities and goals that make hiring and retaining these employees more difficult. And we look at some of the strategies to mitigate that and some of the strategies to approach this future generation of employees. Where can you find them? How can you show them the skills they need and how can you make a compelling offer to them? We see training as being a universal demand from both the employer and employee side. A number of areas where identified where employees that are currently out there might not be current with all of the skills they need to be competitive in today's market and employers are seeing that they are having to make investments in training. I think we found that 95% of the respondents had some sort of active training program going on. As for how effective that is, well, it's kind of a mixed bag. We found that there were a variety of approaches to generating and upskilling new hires. New talent and training programs were one of those areas that were effective, but there were actually a few that we found that led to really great results for, especially on the hiring side for finding and generating interest from those skilled employees. AI and data science isn't really just kind of a buzzword. It really is having an impact across all aspects of this industry and I think it's only going to continue to grow. Obviously it's a key focus for so many companies and it's a key focus for so many customers. How can AI and machine learning and big data and data science, how can this change how we work and what we produce? And the challenge I think that the automation industry is going to face is everybody is becoming aware that these roles are going to be key to a lot of business models going forward. And the automation industry needs to be well positioned to make attractive offers to these employees that have these skills. And look at generating that internal knowledge base and that internal skill set with employees. One of the big responses that we got was not everybody feels that their current workforce is where they need to be with AI machine learning, and whether that means undertaking an internal training program or prioritizing hiring into roles with a AI and machine learning skill set in mind. There's a variety of approaches that companies can take, but it really is going to be a key focus going forward. Thanks for joining me. As we talked about the Industrial Automation Workforce report, it is available now from a Three's bookstore and you can easily check it out with the link on screen or the link in the description below. We have exclusive member pricing, so make sure to sign in and see what discount you're eligible for.