JLL welcomes mysterious new staff member
JLL Sydney has welcomed a new staff member to its administrative team – commencing a pilot humanoid robot program in the process.
JiLL – a 57 centimetre tall, moving and talking robot – will act as a receptionist and concierge for the company’s Integrated Facilities Management team, with facial recognition software allowing her to differentiate between visitors and members of staff.
JiLL will greet staff, visitors and couriers and assist them with a range of tasks, including check-in for meetings, providing directions, contacting hosts and recording and reporting technology or building maintenance issues.
Chris Hunt, JLL’s Australasian Head of Integrated Facilities Management (IFM) said the pilot of robotics would assist JLL to identify improvements to client services.
JiLL the robot stands at 57 centimetres tall. Photo: Supplied
“We are assessing the opportunities for artificial intelligence in the workplace. We see a future for robots in the workplace and organisations will need to understand what robots can offer for the future workplace and they will need a strategy to integrate humans and robots. We are taking our first step in this journey by JiLL joining the JLL team.”
JLL sees the pilot program as an opportunity to build on their depth of advice to clients contending with robotisation of their respective industries.
“This is a trend that is developing fast and is something our clients will need to contend with. We wanted to trial it first, starting small but thinking big and then be able to advise on how best to implement a robotics strategy into the management of building facilities,” Mr Hunt said.
It’s expected that robots like JiLL will eventually take over from all front of house tasks, according to Phil Clark, JLL’s Head of Business Transformation, IFM.
“Over the next 10-20 years, we will continue to see a range of current job functions being fulfilled by robots and other automated machines. We expect to see a range of functions in the customer service industry become automated in this timeframe. This will result in providing opportunities for future workers to upskill and concentrate their efforts on the work that will produce the biggest benefits for business performance,” said Mr Clark.
“This is really about automating those tasks such as greeting guests, providing directions, and assisting staff with administrative tasks in the workplace. JiLL’s duties will continue to grow over the coming months.”
JiLL, a collaboration between French and Japanese manufacturers, has a list of current duties including assisting visitors with appointments, providing directions to the bathroom, supporting deliveries and collections, assisting with forgotten access passes, recording and reporting building related faults and recording and reporting IT faults.
JLL’s announcement of JiLL comes a month after Stockland and Commonwealth Bank of Australia announced a robot testing partnership aimed at assessing the customer service potential of robots.
The partnership will involve research of the social potential of robots, based on the use of a humanoid robot purchased by CBA called “Chip” and could assist in the implementation of robots into retail environments.
