Standard Chartered chief executive Bill Winters found himself in hot water after describing thousands of employees as \u201clower-value human capital\u201d.<\/p>\n
The comments, made in the context of AI-driven plans to cut 7,800 jobs by 2030, drew swift criticism. Former Singapore president Halimah Yacob called the language \u201cdemeaning\u201d and \u201cdisturbing\u201d, saying workers \u201care human beings with families, not just a form of capital\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ironically, Yacob\u2019s rebuke was not entirely free of the same managerial language. \u201cCarry out retrenchments humanely,\u201d she said, with \u201cretrenchments\u201d being a euphemism for firings.<\/p>\n
The outcry forced Winters to clarify his remarks in a memo to staff, but the underlying trend is not in doubt here. <\/p>\n
Standard Chartered also talked about lifting \u201cincome per employee\u201d and improving returns as headcount in support functions falls. That all sounded good to investors, with shares rising in morning trading.<\/p>\n
Winters is not alone in his phrasing. A week earlier, Goldman Sachs president John Waldron said he often described the bank as \u201ca human assembly line\u201d, adding that these \u201chuman assembly lines will become more digitised, digital agents will be our robots\u201d. How lovely.<\/p>\n
Still, the harsh reality is that both Winters and Waldron are saying, albeit too plainly, what markets are already pricing in. Data centres costing billions cannot survive merely by helping middle managers draft slightly better emails. For many, the sums only really work if fewer people are left doing the work. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Standard Chartered chief executive Bill Winters found himself in hot water after describing thousands of employees as \u201clower-value…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466246,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,50132,61,60,201594,80,1962],"class_list":["post-466245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-goldman-sachs-group","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-standard-chartered-group","tag-technology","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}