The balance of power between employees and employers in Switzerland conceals a second battle, less visible but just as decisive for your career: automation.
The key fact: the trade union organization is demanding increases of between 3% and 5% depending on the sector, highlighting, for example, healthcare and large-scale retail. This balance of power is considered favorable to employees in a context of low unemployment and a war for talent.
What this means in practice
But this position of strength has a downside. The analysts at Le Temps point out that if an employee leverages the law of supply and demand to change jobs, this situation could, in the long term, accelerate the long-awaited robotic revolution, once again weakening certain occupational groups.
For recruiters, this means constantly weighing labor costs against technological investment. For candidates, it means that positions most exposed to rapid wage increases are also those that will be assessed first for partial or total automation. The distinction between repetitive tasks and tasks with high relational or decision-making value is becoming a criterion of job security, not merely performance.
Concrete action this week
List the three most repetitive tasks in your current role. For each one, note whether an automation tool already exists in your sector. Then identify one skill that only you, as a human, bring to the same process (contextual judgment, customer relations, ethical decision-making). Highlight this skill in your next annual review or on your LinkedIn profile.
LinkedIn post idea to adapt: "People are talking a lot about wage increases for 2027. They are talking less about what drives some companies to automate rather than increase wages. Here is the question I am asking myself about my own role this week: which task could an algorithm do for me tomorrow? And what remains once that task is removed?"