Was I being a little naive when I thought the leaders of businesses might have learnt a lesson from Standard Life?

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Cast your minds back to May this year when the CEO caused widespread consternation by describing the back-office staff who were being made redundant to be replaced by AI as ‘lower value human capital’ – talk about put the knife in and twist the blade!

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Only last week I heard of a not dissimilar scenario where staff were summoned to a meeting outside of working hours for it to be implied that their replacement by AI was partly due to high sickness levels (screams disengaged staff to me) and that staff could get a less skilled role for more money (oh that’s okay then!). Funnily enough, no mention of using AI to reduce costs then?

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Bear in mind when sending these messages that you are communicating with human beings who more often than not take pride in their work, strive for success and have worked very hard for you!

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Have a little bit of humanity please while you still have living and breathing people in your workforce.