The New Workplace - let's face the future!

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

buglawton wrote: »

Did you go on to hear the bit where the reporter visited Whitbread's HQ to find the entire corporation being seeming run by a handful of people? Yes the higher echelons earn more but there are hardly any of them!

Yes I listened to the full programme, again, it was really quite misleading.

The top floor at their HQ with the Senior Executive Team had 60 odd people on it, but in addition to that, there is a really significant support structure in place both in field teams and middle management at head office.

Their head office alone has over 800 people working in it....

Many of them are stereotypical mid level manager jobs like this one in HR on £56K, and this one in logistics at £35K, and this one in Accounts at £50K

I'd be really, really surprised if they didn't have more than 1000 well paid (£40K and above) GM, cluster GM, and Regional/Area managers, etc, across the various brands field teams. Plus the middle manager head office bods as above.

I don't disagree with the basic premise of the programme, but the examples they've used are really, really misleading.

Either the interviewer didn't understand the industry (likely) or went in search of some dubious examples to try and exaggerate the point.

Which is a real shame, as the programme has some promise and is on an interesting topic, but there's no excuse to get things that wrong just to try and make a point which is actually true, but nowhere near as dramatic as they're trying to make out....

zagubov

buglawton wrote: »

Been following C4's Humans?
I think they got it wrong though: It won't be robots being as clever as humans, it'll be jobs being redesigned using IT, so that humans only need to have the IQ of a robot.

You need to read this.:D

kabayiri

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

...
Which is a real shame, as the programme has some promise and is on an interesting topic, but there's no excuse to get things that wrong just to try and make a point which is actually true, but nowhere near as dramatic as they're trying to make out....

Possibly, it's the reality of editorial challenges kicking in. If they don't make it dramatic they may struggle to get any sort of point across.

I tend to treat these sort of programs as food for thought rather than a definitive treatise on the subject.

I do think we have seen techology change the world of work for certain sectors much more than others. This doesn't remove the driving forces for looking at these other areas though.

One small example. Pharmacists are still in that bracket of specialist skill still in the hands of humans. However there is an American company rolling out an automated station to stores in the US which will perform over 200 automated tests when you make the payment.

To some this sort of automation would be unthinkable. To others they will adopt and use these stations if they feel they gain more for less.

Predicting how quickly and when things change. That's the toughie!