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.
Nordea Bank is initiating employer-employee negotiations to reduce approximately 420 jobs in Finland. The job reductions concern back-office functions and units serving private individuals and SMEs. Around 50 of the back-office jobs are intended to be off-shored to Estonia and Poland, where Nordea today hasĀ around 1,500 employees. Some reductions will also take place through retirements and natural turnover.
Nordea announced in October 2017 that due to significant digitalisation and automatisation initiatives, it will reduce up to 2,000 external consultants and 4,000 internal staff internationally in the next four years. Nordea will offer training programmes and support packages to those who will be made redundant, and has created a re-employment unit to help them.
Trade union Nousu has strongly criticised Nordea for the planned redundancies.
Update, 12/02/2018: Employer-employee negotiations were concluded in Nordea's Personal Banking unit in early February 2018. The number of dismissals in the unit landed at 123 employees, but some may still agree on other arrangements with the company. Out of the originally announced 420 job reductions, 220 were to be targeted at the Personal Banking unit. The figure was lowered from 220 to the current 123 through for instance voluntary retirement agreements. The final number of redundancies as compared to the original 420 remains uncertain.
Eurofound (2017), Nordea, Internal restructuring in Finland, factsheet number 92747, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/92747.