The Eurocadres blog
Digitalisation changes professions
For the European social partners, summer began with negotiations for an autonomous agreement on digitalisation. Digital technologies must facilitate workers' creativity and innovativeness. To achieve this objective, it is necessary to examine the usefulness and purpose of the platforms and technologies used to build a sense of meaning at work. It is a question of designing the work of tomorrow and anticipating social and environmental issues.
Combining social, environmental and technological progress with political and economic choices will give us more technological determinism in the future. Considering the expected upheavals in our social model; in the relationship to and meaning of work; in the quality of life at and outside work; and in the strong changes inside of professions: work needs to be put back in focus.
The challenge is to strengthen and supplement current labour legislation so that it better frames the expected changes by its normative nature, and thus encourages the various actors to build new protections, of which training is an integral part.
Training is a medium and long-term investment. At the time of digital revolution, the evolution of professions requires re-evaluation of their content, quality and conditions. The recognition and upgrading of qualifications in all professions lead to a better mix of jobs.
The role of workers in new work environments is changing.
Digital and organisational solutions go hand in hand. The role of workers in new work environments is changing. Work organisations must be designed in such a way as to preserve health, living and working conditions. The productivity gains generated by the implementation of new work organisations and the introduction of digital tools must be assessed and used to meet these objectives.
The objective of new work organisations must enhance the value of human activity by focusing on rewarding tasks that generate analytical thinking and creativity. Technological means must support decision-making while reducing administrative and reporting tasks.
The rise of digitalisation has repercussions on working conditions and processes as well as on employment conditions.
The rise of digitalisation has repercussions on working conditions and processes as well as on employment conditions. Digital technologies allow an increasingly intrusive level of control and monitoring of workers and raise the question of privacy concerns and the use of staff data. To this end, it is a question of creating workers’ rights for all platform workers and giving access to social protection for self-employed workers like unemployment, illness, vocational training, retirement benefits etc.
The author
Jean-Luc Molins
National Secretary of the General Union of Engineers, Managers and Technicians (Ugict-CGT)