Despite increasing use of technology by staffing firms — as well as rapid growth in automated forms of staffing such as human cloud platforms — staffing firm internal staff see little likelihood that such changes will affect their future job prospects, according to the report, “North America Internal Staff Survey 2018: Perception of automation impact on internal staff employment,” recently released by Staffing Industry Analysts.

Internal workers at staffing firms were asked “What is the risk that your job will be replaced by automation (replacement by artificial intelligence and/or robotics) over the next 10 years?” Forty percent of those surveyed perceive no risk at all that their job will be replaced by automation, and another 53% think the risk of automation is low. Only 7% of internal staff perceive the risk of automation to be high.

For the moment, their optimism may be well-founded, according to John Nurthen, SIA’s executive director, global research.

“While the larger staffing firms have begun to make serious investments in digital solutions, headcount is still growing in a relatively buoyant staffing market,” Nurthen said. “Take Adecco, for instance, which — despite investing in online platforms such as Adia and Yoss as well as recruitment chatbot Mya — still chose to increase its number of full-time employees by 2% in Q3 2017.”

But, as AI and the processing of big data become increasingly sophisticated, recruitment consultants may well find their jobs being repurposed. The latest advances in robotic processing automation as typified by Stafory’s “Robot Vera” can not only source candidates but contact them to tell them about the job and conduct interviews. “Staffing firms will have to make a difficult choice in the future over which tasks are better automated and which are best left in the hands of their human recruiters,” Nurthen said.

“Staffing firms having been using technology a great deal over the last decade to improve operational processes, and that’s going to continue, possibly even accelerate,” said Jon Osborne, VP strategic research, and the author of the report. “It would be hard to imagine that trend not having at the very least a dampening effect on growth in internal staff. Branches are already in decline at many staffing firms.”

Osborne added that, like any industry, there is a certain amount of natural employee attrition, so it may well be that for any individual employee the risk related to automation is low. “It just depends on how quickly these new forms of automation are developed and deployed,” he said. “Online staffing is another matter; that’s still in its infancy, but has the potential to be a game changer.”

Perception of automation risk varied more noticeably as a function of age and salary: Younger and lower-paid respondents perceived greater risk, which is reasonable given that such jobs tend to be more routine in nature and therefore more susceptible to automation.

The occupations perceiving the greatest risk were “sourcing specialist” and “administrative or executive assistant.” In general, the occupations perceiving the lowest risk were managers and executives, with risk declining in proportion to managerial seniority.

The report found little notable variance in perception of automation risk as a function of primary skill set served, although staff serving the healthcare and industrial segments were slightly more optimistic regarding their job prospects.

The report included responses from some 13,000 internal staff workers from 185 staffing firms.

SIA corporate members can access the report online.