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.
Multinational bank HSBC has announced plans to reduce its global headcount by 50,000 by the end of 2017. The foreseen restructuring plans will lead to almost one in five jobs of the bank’s global workforce, which currently amounts to around 260,000 people, being lost. It is foreseen that 25,000 of the planned job reductions will be achieved by selling the bank’s operations in Turkey and Brazil. A further 22,000 to 25,000 job cuts would be achieved by 2017 through cost reductions across the group. The bank said that automation of operations will help cut 12,000 to 13,000 of those jobs. It is foreseen that up to 8,000 of the planned job cuts will affect the bank’s UK workforce, which currently amounts to 48,000 staff (see UK factsheet). Through this restructuring, the bank will try to achieve up to $5 billion in annual cost cuts by 2017.
As part of the announcement, the bank said that it would refocus its business on Asia and consider whether to move its global headquarters from the UK back to Hong Kong, from where it had moved in 1992.
Eurofound (2015), HSBC, Internal restructuring in World, factsheet number 83664, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/83664.