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.
C&W has said it expects to cut up to 3,000 jobs in the UK until 2011. The move is part of a restructuring plan unveiled by C&W as it refocuses its UK operations to concentrate on fewer but larger business customers. The revamp aims to cut C&W's customer base from 30,000 to 3,000. C&W currently employs more than 5,500 people in the UK. It has about 2,000 staff in Bracknell, and other sites in Leeds, Manchester, Reading and London. The company said that it would be reducing its UK workforce to between 2,500 and 3,500 over the next four to five years, adding that 350 jobs would be cut during the current financial year. John Pluthero, the new head of C&W's UK division, said. 'As we reduce the number of customers we serve, fix some of our problems, strip out layers of management, we will need fewer people to run the business.' Mr Pluthero said the company would be 'selling less stuff but making better profits out of it'. C&W employs more than 5,000 people in the UK following the acquisition of Energis for £631 million in August 2005. Mr Pluthero is expected to focus the UK business on serving its large corporate customers, while closing down less profitable units that deal with small-to-medium sized businesses.
Eurofound (2006), Cable and Wireless, Internal restructuring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 63020, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/63020.