A report by the National Skills Council recently warned that up to 46,000 jobs in Ireland are at risk from automation, while a recent study by McKinsey consultants estimates that 800 million people globally could be made redundant by technology by 2030.

Businesses can save thousands of euro on redundancy payments and recruitment costs by upskilling ‘at risk’ staff in coding, rather than making them redundant. That’s according to Dublin 8 based Wild Code School Dublin who today launched their part-time coding courses which run over five months.

Wild Code School Dublin is advocating the retraining of existing staff who are at risk of redundancy in coding, rather than paying thousands in redundancy packages and thousands more in recruitment of new coding staff.

This effectively means retraining staff in skills to create the technology which would otherwise have rendered them unemployed.

Speaking at the launch of the new part-time coding course, Campus Manager at Wild Code School Dublin, Marek Wystepek said, "There is a huge opportunity for companies who are at risk of having to make staff redundant due to advances in technology. There are savings to be made by upskilling existing and loyal staff. Currently, the statutory minimum redundancy to be paid to an employee who has been working at a company for five years on a salary of €40,000 a year is just over €6,600. Add to that the thousands of euro that the recruitment of one employee costs a company and you begin to see the savings and efficiencies that can be made."

Source: www.businessworld.ie