Industrial Dream Jobs: A Human-Centric Future for Industrial Jobs
Published on : Sunday 04-12-2022
How can industrial companies reduce labour shortages, entice people to continue their careers and attract the next generation of workers?
Industrial work is changing. The main drivers of transformation are the digital and green transitions, which push companies to invest in technology and sustainability. At the same time, there is increasing pressure to remain competitive while global material shortages are impacting many industries.
Other phenomena play a part in the transformation of work as well.
For example, since the beginning of the Covid-pandemic, millions of people have quit their jobs globally. In addition, the aging workforce in many developing countries is creating labour shortages. How can industrial companies reduce labour shortages and entice people to continue their industrial careers when there are many other exciting options? In addition, there is massive competition for future talents in several fields. How can the industry attract the next generation of workers?
However, the future doesn’t have to be bleak.
Advances in digitalisation, AI, and new robot co-working solutions, among others, could enable more enjoyable and meaningful industrial jobs for the next generation.
To combat the flight of employees and to attract future generations, a human-centric approach is needed. This means gaining insight into the actual work of individuals through studies, observation, and data-driven research. The purpose is to identify opportunities to make tasks more engaging and attractive. In addition, it is essential to design flexible solutions so that they can adapt to the user’s preferences on where and when to carry out the work, using various interfaces ranging from traditional ones to novel virtual technologies. Right now, it is usually the worker that is forced to adapt to the tools.
Many people today expect their job also to match with their individual values. Therefore building different aspects of sustainability into jobs is essential in attracting future talent. In the long run, a happy worker is an efficient worker. Flexibility and job satisfaction increase productivity.
It is crucial to proactively co-design new industrial dream jobs that motivate and empower workers. At the same time, these jobs drive productivity in all human centric domains from manufacturing to logistics, maintenance and construction. As examples of future dream jobs, we’ve created six employee personas. They are fictional but realistic depictions of tomorrow’s industrial jobs. We hope they can act as an inspiration in helping industrial companies to imagine a bright future.
Industrial Dream Job 1
“I love working with ethical questions in cyber security because it’s a field that has become increasingly important in our company’s everyday life.”
-Eduardo, Cyber Ethics Manager
As the role of digital assets and networks becomes critical to manufacturing, cyber security and ethical questions in working with shared information become vital for all companies.
Eduardo, 33, works as Cyber Ethics Specialist for a multinational packaging manufacturing company. He has been interested in computers and hacking since he was young. He got his first bug bounty at only 15, so a career in cybersecurity felt like a natural progression from this hobby.
Eduardo was recruited to the company around six months ago to oversee its cybersecurity strategy. He was especially interested in this position because ethical questions had been prioritised in addition to the more traditional cyber security questions. These past few months, he has been busy assessing the company’s overall cyber security risks and setting guidelines for the ethical use of network data. One of the goals has been to establish the company’s first bug bounty program for its smart packaging tracking system.
With the foundations of the cybersecurity strategy in place, Eduardo is moving more and more towards management and training best practices in sharing inter-company data in the whole value network. As the company has started developing smart packaging, the extended organization from the factory floor to partners and vendors needs to be familiar with the new policies Eduardo is setting in place.
Just last week, Eduardo was alerted by AI about anomalous user behaviour in the network. As Eduardo quickly isolated the impacted systems, it looked like the risk affected two of their partner companies operating in the same network. He immediately contacted his colleagues in the affected companies to prevent the spread of any confidential information. Eduardo was acknowledged by the partner company for his quick actions because there was a real risk of losing data that could harm them if leaked.
Industrial Dream Job 2
“The best part of my work is that I get to be in contact with people from all over the world.”
-Connie, Data-Driven Supply Manager
As supply chains become more and more like partner networks with digital threads, new expertise is needed to guarantee a flexible and sustainable flow of goods.
Connie, 27, has an engineering degree specialising in logistics. She spent her youth living in an apartment overlooking the harbour of Hamburg. Perhaps that is why she has been curious about the transport and movement of goods since she was very young.
Today, Connie works as a Data-Driven Supply Manager. As a very outgoing person, Connie likes that most of her work is social. She works with suppliers, vendors, and partners practically daily. The meetings are primarily virtual, as she works as a part of the global pool of experts.
Right now, Connie is about to start leading a new project. The goal is to dramatically reduce the number of spare parts in her employer’s main production sites since they plan to close their warehouses. To achieve this goal, Connie will adopt data-driven tools capable of collecting and analysing real-time maintenance data from the sites, warehouse inventory, the spare parts supplier’s inventories, and the logistics partner’s data. Different AI tools will help her identify the supply network’s bottlenecks and predict the need and availability of spare parts.
She is determined to make a real business impact with the project – to move from warehousing to an on-demand self-optimising supply network and improve the company’s sustainability.
Extracted from Industrial Dream Jobs, a new handbook by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd. Reproduced with permission. For more information, contact: Karoliina Salminen. Email: [email protected]
