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.
PPR Group subsidiary La Redoute has announced reorganisation plans including the closure of 81 point of contact sites in France over the next four years. It planned to cut 672 jobs out of 5,000 staff in France. La Redoute, the mail order unit of French retail group PPR , is restructuring to make the Internet its main sales channel and will shed some 13 percent of staff over the next four years.
The measures, presented to the division's works council Tuesday, will affect 672 jobs, including 430 at the sites it may close and 151 at its headquarters.
La Redoute, a household name in France that sells everything from children's clothing to woman's fashion and home decor, is focusing development on Internet sales, which aren't growing fast enough to compensate for the decline in traditional mail-order sales, the company said.
In this context, La Redoute must accelerate the development of its new economic and sales model. By using the web as its major sales channel and adapting its structures and organizations, the relaunch plan presented by the company aims at developing a more innovative and responsive product offering, creating an even closer relationship with customers, and better responding to their needs.
This action plan consists in streamlining all head office departments, remapping its network of points of contact with the clientele, and outsourcing the handling of mailing orders.
Adaptation of the head office organization should enable La Redoute to improve its operational responsiveness, indispensable to a business which today earns more than half of its revenues from online sales.
PPR, formerly Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, is a France-based company that specializes in retail and luxury goods distribution. The Company's Retail division markets fashion, accessories, beauty care products, home furnishings, cultural products, electronic goods and household appliances.
Eurofound (2008), La Redoute, Internal restructuring in France, factsheet number 67258, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/67258.