The Overlooked Technology That Could Reshape Office Space
Robotic process automation has lower-level tech workers worried about their jobs. Should CRE be concerned about another disruption to the office environment?
When the commercial real estate industry looks at the impact technology is expected to have on the sector, it tends to the focus on the big picture such as autonomous vehicles, blockchain or drones. These technologies do indeed have the potential to remake CRE and bear close watching. But their widespread adoption is years off. Leaving aside a few pilot projects here and there, CRE companies are more inclined to take a wait-and-see attitude than make tangible moves.
What Is Robotic Process Automation?
One technology that tends to be overlooked–and that is already having an impact on office jobs–is robotic process automation. RPA is an automation technology used for repetitive tasks such as maintaining or updating records or web-page scraping — in other words, tasks that companies pay humans to preform. The mantra among RPA vendors and even analysts that cover the space is that it is a technology that is best suited to complement a worker–make his or her job easier to perform–not replace the worker.
The Potential To Eliminate Jobs
Still, various stats point to the job-killing potential RPA has in the office. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that 14% of jobs in member countries are 20 years away from automation. In the United States that is an estimated 13 million jobs, according to Cushman & Wakefield, which cited the number in a recent report on technology and CRE.
Forrester Research predicts that by 2021, RPA will be doing the equivalent work of nearly 4.3 million humans worldwide.
The potential is already here in fact. A recent article in the New York Times looked at the automation programs underway at State Auto Insurance Cos. in Columbus, Ohio, started its first automation pilot project two years ago. Today its software programs handling back-office tasks have an estimated savings of 25,000 hours of human work — or the equivalent of about a dozen full-time workers — on an annualized basis, assuming a standard 2,000-hour work year, according to the NYTimes.
“This isn’t about some ‘far future’ of work–change is already happening, and accelerating,” PwC said in its Workforce of the Future report issued last year.
How Should CRE Prepare?
What impact will these changes have on office occupying trends? That is hard to say right now, as RPA is still in its early days. Some things are obvious right now: the jobs that will be affected will be in the administrative and low-level technology positions, at least in the beginning. RPA, coupled with other technology such as Business Process Automation could eventually start to move higher up the career food chain and affect mid-level jobs.
Some hints as to how CRE can prepare for this technology are found in C&W’s report “Will Robots Take Over CRE?”
Referring to transformative technologies, such as ridesharing or autonomous vehicles, C&W notes that following wide adoption of any tech trend there is likely to be a lag in the impact on real estate. “This lag should not be viewed as a “wait and see” period; rather, the early adoption cycle should be used to determine where impacts may occur and possible remediation strategies.”
It is also important to note that so far new technologies have created more jobs over the last century than they have eliminated, C&W wrote. A recent Pew Research Center study found that in the last 15 years new job categories were created by the advent of new technologies — such as computer network support specialists, information security analysts and network architects, among others. “A similar trend should emerge in the next 15 years,” C&W said.
Another word of comfort from C&W’s report: technology-related jobs tend to support wider employment and adjacent jobs including support and management. Of course, the reverse is also true–as tech jobs are eliminated presumably so too will be the supporting roles.
In the end, the best CRE prognicastors can do is watch the trends unfold and be prepared to react quickly. “The pace of technology change makes it almost impossible to predict its impact with any accuracy,” C&W concluded. “The only way for CRE professionals to adapt to changing paradigms brought on by technology advances is to focus on flexibility and efficiencies, particularly flexibility in asset use and design, leases and service offerings.”