Automation has been increasing for many decades — but automation is not intelligence. It is the addition of more cognitive capabilities in technologies that will allow companies to reconfigure their human capital requirements. Accounting is no exception.
By using accounting software and cloud computing, the modern finance chief can spend their time not simply keeping files, books and tax returns in order, but gathering immense amounts of data and making computations more quickly and easily. The bulk of their time can now be spent analysing the data to discover ways for the business to improve operations and plan strategically.
There is ample historical evidence that innovation does not destroy jobs. For instance, in 1910 manufacturing, transport, retail and domestic services were the big employers in developed economies. Inventions such as the washing machine, dishwasher, microwave and electric stove put an end to domestic service as a large employer.
Yet, the big economies didn’t experience huge waves of unemployment, because new careers in professional services that didn’t exist in 1910 were invented. Similarly in the 1980s, secretaries were one of the largest categories of employees with entire rooms of typewriters and filing cabinets. Yet again, there was no collapse in employment when desktops replaced them — as new employment categories emerged.
Nonetheless, finance leaders need to recognise employees’ legitimate fear of being replaced. As employees perceive that digital transformation could threaten their jobs, they may well push back both consciously and unconsciously in the hope the project will fail and management will abandon the effort, sparing their jobs.
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