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.
Lloyds Banking Group has announced that it is to cut 930 more jobs. The latest jobs cuts are understood to be spread across six divisions of the bank - insurance, wealth, commercial banking, the information office, community banking and risk. The jobs are not branch based customer facing roles.
As part of the restructuring, Lloyds is also creating 465 jobs in the same divisions and affected employees are being asked to consider applying for the new roles. Lloyds has stressed that it will do all it can to avoid compulsory redundancies. It has been reported in the media that affected employees were informed of the proposed changes at the end of January 2018 and that the statutory consultation process is underway.
The job cuts follow many years of restructuring for the group under its chief executive António Horta-Osório who was appointed in 2011. This latest announcement has been made ahead of the company's new three year plan which is expected to be unveiled later in February 2018. Given the group's recent history, further restructuring may be anticipated.
Eurofound (2018), Lloyds Banking Group, Internal restructuring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 93372, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/93372.