The AI Takeover: 8 White-Collar Jobs In Danger in the Age of Automation

When AI came to the business world, we expected it to disrupt the blue-collar jobs the most. However, as we’ve seen through the last couple of years, it’s the white-collar jobs that are most shaken by this transformation. 

Around 19% of U.S. workers are facing job elimination because of AI in the workplace. Is this just the result of a recession or is AI really here to steal all of our jobs? 

The short answer: a little bit of both.

The long answer: let’s look at this article in detail to see the nuance of the answer. 

AI in White-Collar Workplaces 

AI isn’t just an efficiency tool; it’s fundamentally restructuring how white-collar jobs operate. AI will change the job roles, skills, and career growth trajectories of many white-collar workers. The biggest exposure to AI replacement are jobs that don’t require physical presence and can be done remotely. These kinds of jobs might be the first on the chopping block. So let’s see what those entail, shall we: 

• Automating routine tasks. Anything from data entry to scheduling will be a task of the past with AI. It will simply take over all of the mundane, routine tasks. A recent Asana survey stated that 29% of current white-collar tasks could be replaced by AI.  
• Enhancing customer service. If you entered any website in the past three years, you’ve been greeted by a virtual assistant or a chatbot that provides 24/7 service. Even though all of these chatbots have different names, they’re powered by mostly the same AI in the background.
• Improving decision-making. Put a bunch of data in an AI model and ask for it to summarize/analyze/provide insights into it and it will do so accurately and with haste. With that, you can uncover hidden insights and have a more accurate decision-making process (based on more data points).
• Streamlining recruitment. Manually checking CVs? A thing of the past. Today, the recruitment process can’t be imagined without AI. From scanning CVs to screening candidates, AI is a major assistant in all recruitment steps. 
• Personalizing marketing. Approach each person with an individual message; before AI, that would have been an impossible task. Today, it’s almost expected. You can use AI to gain insights from multiple data points, ensure relevancy with the correct data, and have scale with AI tools. 
• Optimizing logistics. Supply chains were carefully managed by people in the past. Today, AI ensures that the supply matches the demand, it reduces waste, lowers waiting time, and with it, increases productivity. 
• Predicting maintenance. The best time to fix a machine is right before it breaks down. Because once it does, you’re paying for all the downtime of the machine, losing productivity. With AI, you can be on top of maintenance and ensure that you downtime is as minimal as possible. 
• Dealing with cybersecurity. With AI, companies can easily detect threats and respond to them faster than the old, manual systems. This will increase security in the companies, ensuring that there are no data leaks or breaches happening from any malevolent third parties. 

Human capital management in the AI age

Workforces will restructure as a consequence of AI. More and more people will have to embrace high-value activities in their jobs to ensure that they’re not replaced by AI. 

The role of HR and leadership in all of this will be to: 

• Align skills. HR teams must align employee skills with the demands of AI-driven workplaces. To do so, HR teams need to invest in re-skilling and up-skilling their employees. Employees will need to have AI-relevant skills if they want to thrive in future roles and with up-skilling and re-skilling, you’ll be able to provide those opportunities to your employees. This will also make your company better since you’ll have more capable employees, positively impacting the bottom line
• Invest in automation. You need to follow the market development and start automating tasks that can be automated. This will increase your company’s productivity and ensure you stay relevant in the market. 
• Develop your people. It’s not enough just automating tasks to stay relevant; you need to invest in your people and develop them for the future of the workplace. You’ll still need people, so make sure that you invest in their continuous training and development. A recent Deloitte study stated that employees engaging in regular learning are 47% less likely to face AI-related impacts.

Don’t think that there are safe industries just because AI didn’t hit everything equally at the start. Even industries such as education and healthcare aren’t immune to AI benefits and are slowly, but surely embracing it in the workplace. 

It’s not a matter of if, but when AI will fully be integrated into your industry. It’s better to be one step ahead and embrace change ahead of the curve than to be late to the party and have to catch up. 

As an employer, you’ll have to strategically assess what roles would benefit the most from AI and what roles still require a human touch. Even in roles where a human touch is still necessary, train your employees to use AI as an assisting tool that will help them increase productivity.

Conclusion

AI came for white-collar jobs and it came fast— it fundamentally transformed (most) white-collar jobs. Companies started to focus on automating repetitive tasks where possible and skill realignment with their employees where human touch is required, to ensure that they stay relevant in the market. However, that’s not the only thing you can do with AI.

You can use ProvenBase’s AI sourcing tool that will help you find underrepresented talent in the marketplace and ensure that you make your hiring choices bias-free.