Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

The transformative impact of tech firms’ technologies

Ivan Williams Jimenez 18th November 2020

The potential benefits of new technologies for workplace health and safety are being vitiated by a profit-focused approach.

tech firms, digital technologies, new technologies
Ivan Williams Jimenez

There’s little doubt the adoption and integration of digital technologies in the workplace have, in principle, great potential to make humankind safer. If we look at past waves of technological advance, we can see how these have ameliorated health and safety and working conditions. There is also growing evidence of the benefits of intelligence-led transformations in the world of work—when ethically implemented.

Robots are being deployed in environments dangerous for workers and technological developments have put an end to certain dangerous and demeaning jobs. Automated systems and the ‘internet of things’ can improve workplace safety with better prevention mechanisms, bringing reduced injuries, as well as increased capacity for human creativity. Robotics and artificial intelligence can alleviate repetitive and stressful tasks which cause musculoskeletal disorders or mental ill health.

Drastically accelerating

In this exciting context of work, employers are drastically accelerating corporate strategies prioritising workplace productivity and business performance and how, in that context, these systems will operate in the future. At the same time, there is increasing demand from the public and civil society for better understanding of how the digitalisation of workplaces will affect workers’ conditions and health and safety.

Many of these fast-moving and highly competitive firms preach the ‘our people are our most important asset’ narrative. Yet when tech companies have addressed the transformative impact of technology in the workplace, ‘the people’ have not seemed to be at the centre of their strategic agenda. Profit-making has remained the priority, leaving workers behind. This needs to stop.


Become part of our Community of Thought Leaders


Get fresh perspectives delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to receive thought-provoking opinion articles and expert analysis on the most pressing political, economic and social issues of our time. Join our community of engaged readers and be a part of the conversation.

Sign up here

Under these circumstances, workplace safety is sacrificed to a production-first mindset and the over-performance of employees. Cutting-edge businesses have been found to keep occupational injuries off the records and to misreport practices, making their due diligence look better than it should. During the pandemic, tech companies have faced criticism for keeping their workplaces fully operative while failing in their duty of care to protect their staff from the risks of contagion.

Different picture

The actual picture is thus far different from the one initially painted. Recent research suggested that physical workplace injury should fall as a result of more pervasive automation. Platform workers were ‘sold’ an illusion of flexibility, freedom and independence. The adoption of AI should have improved the collection and analysis of information needed to assess and manage workplace safety and health hazards and ameliorated routines causing worker fatigue or psychological stress. Latest developments in people analytics are capable of detecting patterns across workers’ data, which could help monitor employees’ health and wellbeing. But the benefits of investment in these technologies for the improvement of working conditions are yet to be evidenced.

Investigations of the real effects of rapid digital disruption in the workplace are holding companies accountable for the negative impacts of technology developments:

  • A leaked Amazon memo revealed plans to hire intelligence analysts to track attempts to organise its workforce. The firm has heavily invested in the automation and robotisation of its warehouses, to the detriment of workers’ safety. Company records obtained by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting showed work-related injuries were 50 per cent higher at robotic facilities than in its conventional warehouses. Robots have become an efficient tool, but this has had a knock-on effect on workers’ productivity expectation, work intensity and pressure.
  • While the Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk, has described automation as humanity’s ‘biggest existential threat’, the company’s aggressive production projections are affecting working conditions. Although there have been technology-related improvements to safety practices, together with incorporation of ergonomics principles into the design phase, the firm is struggling with workplace safety issues.
  • In 2017, it was reported that Barclays used a tracking software, OccupEye, surreptitiously to monitor the presence of its workers at their desks, impinging on the privacy of staff and affecting their mental wellbeing.

The incorporation of automation, AI systems and so on in workplaces by technologically advanced companies is thus coming under intense public scrutiny. Associated practices have recently been exposed in American Factory, The Social Dilemma and The Great Hack, documentaries which have only scratched the surface of how world-leading tech firms have the potential to produce profound transformations in the global workforce.

It’s critical that organisations shift their business strategies from a technology-centric work culture to one that puts people at the centre. Corporations in the digital age need to keep pace with requirements for public disclosure, stronger due diligence and policies and practices for the governance of AI. And before individual technology transformations are deployed in a workplace, a safety assessment must be performed.

See our series of articles on the Transformation of Work

Ivan Williams Jimenez
Ivan Williams Jimenez

Dr Ivan Williams Jimenez is a policy and advocacy manager at the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health in the UK. He supports IOSH’s global advocacy on health, safety and wellbeing, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, supply chains and decent work. The views expressed here are those of the author alone.

You are here: Home / Economy / The transformative impact of tech firms’ technologies

Most Popular Posts

Russia,information war Russia is winning the information warAiste Merfeldaite
Nanterre,police Nanterre and the suburbs: the lid comes offJoseph Downing
Russia,nuclear Russia’s dangerous nuclear consensusAna Palacio
Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto

Most Recent Posts

European Health Data Space,EHDS,Big Tech Fostering public research or boosting Big Tech?Philip Freeman and Jan Willem Goudriaan
migrant workers,non-EU Non-EU migrant workers—the ties that bindLilana Keith
ECB,European Central Bank,deposit facility How the ECB’s ‘deposit facility’ subsidises banksDavid Hollanders
migrant,Europe,workers All work and low pay—Europe’s migrant workforceAnkita Anand
art,European,prize The case for a European prize for artNed Hercock

Other Social Europe Publications

strategic autonomy Strategic autonomy
Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 scaled 1 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship

ETUI advertisement

The four transitions and the missing one

Europe is at a crossroads, painfully navigating four transitions (green, digital, economic and geopolitical) at once but missing the transformative and ambitious social transition it needs. In other words, if the EU is to withstand the storm, we do not have the luxury of abstaining from reflecting on its social foundations, of which intermittent democratic discontent is only one expression. It is against this background that the ETUI/ETUC publishes its annual flagship publication Benchmarking Working Europe 2023, with the support of more than 70 graphs and a special contribution from two guest editors, Professors Kalypso Nikolaidïs and Albena Azmanova.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound Talks: housing

In this episode of the Eurofound Talks podcast, Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound’s senior research manager, Hans Dubois, about the issues that feed into housing insecurity in Europe and the actions that need to be taken to address them. Together, they analyse findings from Eurofound’s recent Unaffordable and inadequate housing in Europe report, which presents data from Eurofound’s Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey, European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and input from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents on various indicators of housing security and living conditions.


LISTEN HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine by FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to the importance of biodiversity, not only as a good in itself but also for the very existence of humankind. We need a paradigm change in the mostly utilitarian relation humans have with nature.

In this issue, we also look at the hazards of unregulated artificial intelligence, explore the shortcomings of the EU's approach to migration and asylum management, and analyse the social downside of the EU's current ethnically-focused Roma policy.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI European Collective Bargaining Report 2022 / 2023

With real wages falling by 4 per cent in 2022, workers in the European Union suffered an unprecedented loss in purchasing power. The reason for this was the rapid increase in consumer prices, behind which nominal wage growth fell significantly. Meanwhile, inflation is no longer driven by energy import prices, but by domestic factors. The increased profit margins of companies are a major reason for persistent inflation. In this difficult environment, trade unions are faced with the challenge of securing real wages—and companies have the responsibility of making their contribution to returning to the path of political stability by reducing excess profits.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube