Upskilling Workers and Re-designing Workplaces for the Future of Automation in the Hospitality Industry

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

This multi-institutional collaborative research project seeks to envision, design and engage in worker-oriented research and training related to the proliferation of automation in the hospitality industry, which has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Large numbers of hospitality workers, who are majority female and from underrepresented groups, are being displaced by these technological changes. Workers’ positions are currently being augmented with algorithmic management and robotic assistance, replacing some jobs and transforming others that cannot be completely automated — for example, high-touch, face-to-face service interactions which are critical to the success of the hospitality industry. The research team will investigate ways that technological innovations of the future can be developed and implemented with input from the workers who are best suited to understand their benefits and pitfalls. It is expected that this project will positively impact the hospitality workforce by preserving jobs, giving people more job satisfaction, reducing the way technology drives inequality, and developing policies and training programs that will generalize to other high-touch service industries. This project brings together several disciplines, including hospitality, human-computer interaction, service design, learning science, labor economics, and industrial relations. The research team has partnered with UNITE HERE, the largest hospitality union in the United States, which will provide a unique opportunity to research, prototype, and evaluate the research outcomes in training facilities and hotels, casinos, and food service establishments. The investigator team is structured to achieve multiple convergent goals. This process will have four iterative, overlapping phases: (1) to qualitatively and quantitatively understand the current state of union hospitality workers, hospitality work, and automation technology; (2) to co-design technology deployment models; (3) to identify workforce needs and training materials to prepare for the future; and (4) to evaluate outcomes to understand how they may impact the future of work. The project will address the lack of worker voice on the impact of future automation technology in the hospitality industry, and to make suggestions for enhancing future workers and future work. This project is funded by the NSF Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier cross-directorate program to promote deeper basic understanding of the interdependent human-technology partnership in work contexts by advancing the design of intelligent work technologies that operate in harmony with human workers. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.