Chinese factories such as Changying Precision Technology (CPT) raises interesting training dilemmas and hiring patterns for HRM practitioners in that country. The company has adopted Australian robotic technology called 'Sawyer', which is different from position-controlled robots employed in car companies in the USA. Since labour costs are increasing by 15 per cent per year in China, and with millennial workers not interested in factory work, this has meant a combination of high turnover of 20-25 per cent a month coupled with high training and acquisition costs. Workforce realities has led companies such as CPT to shift the focus of work from leveraging people to leveraging robots. As we see in this chapter, this is high-quality situated learning in response to rapid innovation around competing markets. In China's case, the introduction of robotic technology conforms to the country's plan to become the global manufacturing leader by 2049. Interestingly, the exporter of the product frol Australia, 'Rethink Robotics', suggests that 'as companies are deploying more and more of these robots, they'ri hiring people that are not roboticists, not automation engineers, but supervisors. Only now, their personnel on the production line are not just people; now they're people and robots. In many cases the people on the line are training. You don't program these robots; you show them what to do' (TechRepublic, 2015a; 2015b).

You will notice the links between this case and other chapters on human resource planning and recruitment and selection. In an emerging economy such as China, the training, development, and learning implications are significant. While traditional training is focused around on-the-job and off-the-job training, contemporary training and development is increasingly moving towards technology solutions, hard in terms of physical technology anc soft in terms of social technology platforms such as Google, Twitter, Linkedln, and others, plus the increasing functionality of Apps that create individual and organisational learning opportunities. At CPT, the robot might replace up to 20 people who performed tasks consecutively. Now, one supervisor simply shows the robot what to do, then says 'Go'. Previously, CPT had 650 workers however with the advent of new technology, this has reduced to 60 according to the company's General Manager (TechRepublic, 2015a; 2015b). Together with manu facturing technology, the rapid take-up of the internet in countries such as China because of low barriers to entr suggest that Internet-enabled offerings, including enterprise cloud services such as infrastructure as a service, platforms as a service and software as a service, make it possible for businesses to take advantage of advancec information technology capabilities while minimising upfront expenditures. For emerging countries, access to new technology (hard and soft) suggests that training agendas will change. External factors such as higher pay, the type of work on offer, and increasing familiarity around technology suggest that training and development priorities in China will move away from on-the-job coaching of hundreds of workers to fewer workers where learning priorities change on the basis of strategy and competition. Robots plus the rise of social technology platforms create future challenges (and opportunities) for HRM training and development.

Questions

1 How is computer technology changing the way people learn? The frequency of learning?

2 What demands for training and development will appear for workers in emerging economies? Why?

3 Massive workforces demand jobs, yet potential conflicts exist between technology platforms (hard and soft) and traditional work. How would you explain these conflicts in places of work?