Ethics in the digital workplace
Digitisation and automation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), can affect working conditions in a variety of ways and their use in the workplace raises a host of new ethical concerns.
Unilever the Anglo-Dutch giant is considering moving hundreds of Finance, Human Resources and IT jobs abroad. Unilever was responding to a report in the German edition of The Financial Times that suggested the company was considering outsourcing 2,500 jobs from around the world to Eastern Europe and India. Unilever said the figure quoted by the newspaper was 'highly speculative' and could not say how many jobs would go worldwide. But the company has confirmed it is considering the possibility of outsourcing administration and IT functions and staff support services. Unilever has IBM and Accenture as potential service providers. No definite decision has been taken on the issue, Unilever has emphasised. Unilever employs 234,000 people in about 100 countries worldwide. On 6 June 2006 Unilever announced that it has assigned part of its human-resource personnel to Accenture. A spokesman of Unilever said this outsource operation will affect 1300 of the 3300 human-resource jobs worldwide. An unknown number of employees will be transferred to Accenture and the rest of the jobs will be cut by other means than direct dismissal.
Eurofound (2005), Unilever, Offshoring/Delocalisation in World, factsheet number 62403, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/62403.