- 21 hours ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 11 hours ago
Bill Winters said it on behalf of all the banks out there: The elimination of “lower value human capital”[1]. Unfortunately, the distasteful comment drew waves of backlashes from the online community as Stanchart contends with launching a series of job cuts.
I don’t think he meant it that way but this has obviously turned into a public relations nightmare.
When the interests of the rank and file are being threatened, especially their livelihoods, it is no surprise that the people will fight back.
It is just a natural instinct to survive.
Nonetheless, it also reveals how resistant we are in terms of embracing artificial intelligence, and potentially how much denial we are in as to the limits of what technology can do these days.
Or maybe we are just too sensitive.
Since the beginning of commerce, companies have been consistently trying to cut costs to maximize profits. And technology, even in its most rudimentary form dating back to the Industrial Revolution, has always sought to alleviate manual and tedious labour. How is that vastly different from eliminating “lower value human capital”?
Besides, the perception of value has always been subjective depending on the yardsticks in which we measure corporate success—Revenue, profitability, market share...or being the go-to employer-of-choice.
A common misconception is alluding "low value" to those who are paid minimum wage for an outcome that can be automated or mechanized. I assure you that there are many low-value employees who are paid a maximum wage, but contribute very little in terms of business function and are of little to virtually no use. Many of them still hide in the blind spots of their organizations pushing paper year after year.
Still, in the words of Jamie Dimon, it was an “inartful” comment[2]. The difference is that instead of just sacking the lift attendants, we have gone all out to proclaim that the world no longer needs a whole bunch of people sitting in the corners of lifts to operate them.
It is great that you have found a way to meet our growth and profitability targets, just don’t say it out that loud.