As artificial intelligence fuels concerns over the future of jobs, JSW MG Motor India believes the automotive workforce needs to focus on continuously reskilling as vehicles and the technologies behind them change.
Yeshwinder Patial, Chief Human Resource Officer, JSW MG Motor India, argues that technological change will reshape individual roles rather than simply eliminate people from the workforce.
“Jobs are not going anywhere. Jobs are there,” Patial told Autocar Professional. “Certain job roles may not remain. It is the job role, not the person.”
His argument is particularly relevant to automotive manufacturing, where employees who have spent years building expertise in internal combustion engine technologies are increasingly encountering EVs and other new-energy powertrains.
Patial, however, does not see reskilling as an overnight exercise where an ICE specialist stops doing one job today and starts working on an EV tomorrow. Instead, he describes it as a gradual process that happens alongside an employee’s existing work.
“It will happen gradually. It’s not an overnight change,” he said, responding to a question on how an employee with 10-15 years of ICE experience could transition to newer technologies.
The employee, he said, can continue working on ICE while simultaneously beginning to learn new technologies. As the product and powertrain mix changes, the balance of skills changes with it.
One Line, Different Powertrains
Patial cited JSW MG’s common-line manufacturing approach as an example, saying ICE and electric vehicles can come off the same line, allowing employees to build exposure to different powertrains as the product mix evolves.
“One vehicle coming out is ICE, the second vehicle is an EV. Probably as we move ahead, the third vehicle will be PHEV and so on,” he said.
Patial’s broader point is that an employee who became an ICE specialist was not inherently an ICE specialist to begin with. That expertise itself was acquired.
“The person was not born to excel in ICE. The person gained that skill by learning, by experimenting and by practising,” he said. “Same thing is required in the new-age thing also. You need to learn, experiment and practise that skill.”
“If I have the attitude to reskill myself, I’m not losing my job.”
New Technologies, but Skill Gaps Remain
The need for continuous development becomes more important as JSW MG expands its focus on new-energy vehicles.
Patial said that while automotive talent is available, finding people with precisely the capabilities required for emerging technologies continues to be a challenge.
“Talent is available, but… is the talent available to the skill what we require? Not,” he said.
He cited plug-in hybrid electric vehicles as an example. Such vehicles combine combustion and electric powertrains, making it difficult to simply recruit someone with a ready-made skill set for every emerging requirement.
“The technology is changing. Skill-set non-availability will remain,” Patial said.
JSW MG’s approach, therefore, is to find people with the underlying capabilities and develop the additional skills required internally.
When asked where he sees the biggest gaps among areas such as battery engineering, power electronics, cybersecurity and embedded software, Patial declined to single out one technology.
“Attitude is something which is overriding,” he said. “Skill set, we’ll take care of. I can train you, but I can’t change your attitude.”
His argument is that employees also need to be willing to broaden their capabilities rather than confining themselves to narrow technological domains.
‘Industry Can’t Blame Academia Alone’
Patial acknowledged a continuing gap between academic education and industry’s rapidly changing skill requirements, but said companies cannot place the responsibility entirely on educational institutions.
“I won’t blame academia alone,” he said. “It is a symbiotic relationship. The industry also has to come forward and give that guidance, [and] get involved with academia.”
He cited MG’s Nurture programme, through which the company has engaged academic institutions and universities on developing capabilities including EV skills.
Patial said this includes working with institutions on courses and training faculty, who can subsequently transfer those capabilities to students.
“It is very easy for me to cry that the institutions are not teaching what is required for me as industry, but I need to take a step ahead, go sit with them, have course curriculums made accordingly,” he said.
“The priority of the industry is always, ‘I would like to have everything ready-made.’ So that is where that gap is. And that gap will remain till the time the industry doesn’t come at the forefront and join hands with them.”
Automotive Engineering Mix Broadens
The transformation is also changing what it means to be an automotive engineer.
Patial said JSW MG recruits engineers from different disciplines without necessarily restricting them to functions traditionally associated with their degrees.
“In my organisation, you will find civil engineers working on the line, in production. You’ll find mechanical engineers working in the IT function,” he said.
“Today, car is no longer a mechanical product. It’s everything across.”
That does not mean mechanical engineers are disappearing.
Patial used a hypothetical example to explain the changing engineering mix. If an automotive programme previously required 100 engineers, perhaps 90 could have been mechanical engineers. A more complex modern vehicle might instead require 200 engineers, including 100 mechanical engineers and another 100 from a wider range of disciplines.
“My percentage has gone down from 90 to 50. Absolute number-wise, mechanical engineers have increased,” he said.
The numbers were illustrative rather than JSW MG workforce figures, but his point was that the rise of software, electronics and other disciplines could reduce mechanical engineering’s percentage of the overall engineering workforce without necessarily reducing the absolute requirement for mechanical engineers.
Hiring has to Precede Technology
The increasing importance of software and electronics also raises another workforce question for automakers: which technologies should continue to come from suppliers and which capabilities should be brought in-house.
Patial said the decision on backward integration ultimately belongs to the business rather than HR.
“Do we really want to do backward integration? That’s a business decision,” he said.
Once that strategic decision is taken, however, workforce planning and recruitment need to begin ahead of the actual requirement.
“Once this decision is clear, then strategic hiring [has] to be done,” Patial said. “Hiring has to be done in advance.”
That gives employees time to develop the required capabilities, experiment and even fail before they are deployed on live projects, he added.
Technology could Boost Gender Diversity
Patial also expects greater automation and technology adoption in manufacturing to support higher participation of women on automotive shopfloors.
One historical barrier, he said, was the physical nature of certain manufacturing operations, including jobs requiring significant manual handling.
“Slowly, slowly, that muscle power has gone down, and with technology coming in, with AI coming in, that muscle power will further be reduced,” he said.
“What we will need is more highly skilled people… who are operating and instructing technology what to do.”
“With technology coming in, this will be a booster to gender diversity on the floor,” Patial added.
Don’t Fear AI, Learn to Use it
This brings Patial to the other side of the workforce debate: whether AI itself should be feared as a threat to automotive employment. His answer is clear.
“People are unnecessarily fearing that AI will be taking jobs,” he said. “AI is the future. It will not replace humans.”
Instead, Patial described AI as a tool whose value will depend on how employees use it.
“You need a user to utilise that tool, and we are the users who will be using that tool. So nothing to fear about it. Accept it.”
Over the next three to four years, Patial expects AI to increasingly handle activities such as information retrieval, analysis and presentation preparation, leaving employees with more time for strategic work.
“They will have ample time to actually spend on strategy rather than preparing presentations, rather than doing the analysis,” he said.
More significantly, Patial expects this capability to spread deeper into organisations. Strategy, in his view, will not remain confined to senior leadership as people across different levels gain faster access to information and analysis.
For Patial, the workforce response to AI is therefore similar to the response required as automotive technology evolves: employees need to adapt and learn to use new technologies rather than fear being replaced by them.
“You need to accept that change is coming, rather become a catalyst so that change happens fast,” he said. “You embrace it, and you leverage that change.”