Automation and integration of automation is leading to a lot of opportunity for the workforce, says the company.
Capgemini plans to hire more than 20,000 people this year. The company will automate many functions and has already re-skilled 45,000 employees till May. Last year, it hired 33,000 employees and re-skilled 51,000.
For the past six months, there has been a lot of layoffs, particularly in IT companies, due to automation. Companies are cutting jobs to reduce high operational costs. Also, due to disruption in technology, the incumbent employees are becoming obsolete and need re-skilling.
Christopher Stancombe, head, industrialisation and automation, Capgemini, says, “There is a lot of training. We are investing a lot of money in the development of training programmes because automation and the integration of automation is leading to a lot of opportunity for our workforce.”
Many companies are reducing new hires and focusing on re-skilling their employees to embrace automation and digitisation. Nasscom has also reported reduction in hiring in IT companies. With the growth of machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics, IT services have become commoditized. This commoditization of the services has further increased the gap between revenue and job growth.
Capgemini, though, sees it the other way.
Stancombe says, “We are seeing an increase in demand and automation is helping our people be more productive. We have been more focused on the positive side. We are seeing that it is releasing people’s time to enable them to do other things – a bit more analytics, customer care. We are seeing a positive influence and a great opportunity for us, clients and employees. Automation is actually increasing demand for people.”
For its India operation, the company has about 100,000 employees.