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.
The accounting and management consultancy company KPMG announced its plans to cut between 200 and 250 administrative jobs as part of a cost-saving measure. According to reports, 670 employees in these roles have been offered voluntary severance packages to achieve the aimed reductions without the need for compulsory redundancies.
For senior employees, the reduction means that they will no longer have a personal assistant for support and they will have to rely on central support from the Birmingham office, where an additional 24 job positions are planned to be created. The timeframe for these changes has not been announced, even though it is likely that the changes will take effect imminently, considering that severance packages have already been offered
Eurofound (2019), KPMG, Internal restructuring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 98647, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/98647.