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Recent Editions
Human Times
North America
Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters has sought to reassure staff after the Asia-focused bank announced plans to cut 15% of back-office jobs by 2030 as it expands AI. Winters said at the time: "It's not cost-cutting. It's replacing in some cases lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital we're putting in." In a memo to staff on Wednesday, which observed that the media coverage of the plans "may be unsettling when reduced to simple headlines or a quote out of context," Connecticut-born Winters said the bank had been open that its workforce will evolve. "Some roles will reduce in number, some will change, and new opportunities will emerge. We will continue to prioritize investment in reskilling and redeployment wherever we can . . . Where changes do happen, we will handle them with thought and care."
Full Issue
Human Times
UK
The threat posed to workers by artificial intelligence is giving employers more leverage, and CEOs are increasingly demanding results and holding people accountable for them. The focus now is on building a “performance culture” - a phrase used 633 times on earnings calls and in corporate documents, up from about 460, across companies in the S&P 500 Index last year - where expectations of workers soar, underperformers risk getting managed out and executives are less forgiving of bureaucratic impediments to efficiency. Ben Bryant, a professor of leadership and organisation at Switzerland’s IMD Business School, wonders: “What will be sacrificed in the interests of performance?” Bloomberg observes that employee mental health, which business leaders prioritised during the pandemic, could once again get short shrift.
Full Issue
Human Times
Europe
The threat posed to workers by artificial intelligence is giving employers more leverage, and CEOs are increasingly demanding results and holding people accountable for them. The focus now is on building a “performance culture” - a phrase used 633 times on earnings calls and in corporate documents, up from about 460, across companies in the S&P 500 Index last year - where expectations of workers soar, underperformers risk getting managed out and executives are less forgiving of bureaucratic impediments to efficiency. Ben Bryant, a professor of leadership and organisation at Switzerland’s IMD Business School, wonders: “What will be sacrificed in the interests of performance?” Bloomberg observes that employee mental health, which business leaders prioritised during the pandemic, could once again get short shrift.
Full Issue
Human Times
Middle East
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague will today deliver a ruling on the right to strike that could have profound implications for global labour relations. The top United Nations court has been asked to issue a non-binding advisory opinion on whether a treaty drawn up in 1948 by the International Labour Organization, known as Convention 87, implicitly enshrines such a right. The treaty includes the right for workers "in full freedom, to organise their administration and activities." Unions say this by extension enshrines the right to industrial action; employers disagree. Although not binding, the ruling will in practice clarify the right to strike in international law. Harold Koh, representing the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), said that if the court ruled the right to strike was not inherent in the Convention, "National employer groups would contest the right to strike country by country, focusing first on nations with compliant courts, weak civil societies and ineffective media."