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.
Barclays, Britain's third biggest bank, is set to hire 1,000 more 'customer facing' branch staff in an effort to improve customer service. At the same time 800 middle management and support jobs will be lost. These posts are in predominantly well-paid areas such as human resources, IT, strategy and finance. There will also be some reduction in support staff.
Barclay's UK banking division employs about 45,000 people and will try to redeploy some of the 800 back-office staff losing their jobs. Barclays has more than 2,000 branches in the UK, with 26,000 people employed at offices, call centres and on the high street.
Eurofound (2004), Barclays, Internal restructuring in United Kingdom, factsheet number 60378, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/60378.