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.
Société Générale bank has announced the loss of 1,600 jobs worldwide, including 750 in France. Worlwide, 1,200 positions will be cut in its Corporate and Investment Banking (BFI) division, which currently employs 20,000 people. In total, 6% of the workforce of this division worldwide is affected. Such a restructuring plan in these businesses is unprecedented since the 2012 crisis. After a series of disappointing quarters, marked by revenues growing too slowly or even falling sharply, BFI was unable to recover its profitability.
The bank's headquarters in Paris will be restructured and the organisation of retail banks and international financial services simplified, resulting in the loss of 171 positions in France. All the measures announced are aimed at reducing the bank's consumption of equity capital.
On 28 November 2017, the bank has announced to investors the additional closure of about 100 branches with 900 job cuts. In September 2015, Sociéte Générale announced that it was going to cut 420 positions in France by the end of 2017 in the framework of a costs saving programme of €850 million in the bank’s corporate and investment banking sectors. A previous restructuring also affected these activities in 2013. The workforce of the bank has decreased over the last years due to restructuring plans announced at a worldwide level in 2012 and 2013 ; and in France, in 2010 May 2013, mid 2013 and end of 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Eurofound (2019), Société Générale, Internal restructuring in World, factsheet number 97538, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/97538.