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

这个多机构合作研究项目旨在设想、设计和参与以工人为导向的研究和培训，这些研究和培训与2019冠状病毒病大流行加速了酒店业自动化的普及有关。由于这些技术变革，以女性和代表性不足群体为主的大量接待工作人员正在被取代。目前，算法管理和机器人辅助正在增加工人的职位，取代了一些工作，并改变了其他不能完全自动化的工作——例如，对酒店业成功至关重要的高接触、面对面的服务互动。研究小组将调查未来技术创新的发展和实施方式，并从最适合了解其好处和缺陷的工人那里获得投入。预计该项目将通过保留工作岗位，提高人们的工作满意度，减少技术导致的不平等，并制定政策和培训计划，从而对酒店业产生积极影响，这些政策和培训计划将推广到其他高接触服务行业。这个项目汇集了几个学科，包括酒店管理、人机交互、服务设计、学习科学、劳动经济学和劳资关系。研究团队与美国最大的酒店业联盟UNITE HERE合作，这将提供一个独特的机会来研究、原型和评估培训设施、酒店、赌场和餐饮服务机构的研究成果。调查小组的结构是为了实现多个目标。这个过程将有四个重复的、重叠的阶段：(1)定性和定量地了解工会酒店工人、酒店工作和自动化技术的现状；(2)协同设计技术部署模型；(3)确定劳动力需求和培训材料，为未来做好准备；(4)评估结果，以了解它们如何影响未来的工作。该项目将解决工人对未来自动化技术在酒店业的影响缺乏发言权的问题，并为提高未来工人和未来工作提出建议。该项目由美国国家科学基金会未来工作人类技术前沿跨部门计划资助，旨在通过推进与人类工人和谐运作的智能工作技术的设计，促进对工作环境中相互依赖的人类技术伙伴关系的更深层次的基本理解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.