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Clerical staff used to prepare customers bank statements. These are now automatically printed and sent to customers with little or no input from staff.
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Counter staff counted out cash for customers making withdrawals. Although this method of withdrawal is still present in banks, the traditional method has been replaced with the introduction of ATMs (automated teller machines), where cash can be withdrawn using a cash card (provided by the bank) allowing individuals to withdraw money from thousands of cashpoint machines all over the country.
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Payroll clerks prepared payslips for thousands of employees. Many companies now have computerised payroll systems that automatically transfer money directly into the employees’ bank accounts.
Furthermore, as well as reducing the counter staff, they have used the computer to unify the decision making process for offering loans and other services to customers. This has eliminated the much of the discretion that bank managers had in the past. As a consequence the traditional bank manager is gone, replaced by what would have been a more junior member of the staff and who is now concerned mainly with the day to day management of the operation of the branch office rather than dealing with the customers and their accounts.
There has also been a growth in the use of credit cards and debit cards to handle payment. This has been greatly aided by the introduction of the retailer transaction system that allow a retailer to handle a purchase and pass it directly through to the card company system for immediate processing. This costs the retailer a percentage of the transaction, but fewer security risks and ease of handling compensate for this because money goes directly from one account to another. The credit card and debit card are moving society to an increasing cash-less basis. This is reducing the amount of cash the retailers have to deal with and therefore the number of shop and banking and security staff needed to process it.
Banks were very careful about dealing with their employees whose jobs disappeared. Resignations and retirements reduced the numbers and most of the remainder were re-trained but some redundancies had to occur. Some low-level posts, such as cashiers, were changed to include such tasks as dealing with post, typing and answering customer’s questions. The banks have been amongst the best at dealing fairly with their employees – and this, along with the computerisation has lead to an enormous increase in banking business over the last 20 years.
JOBS IN COMPUTING
Surveys of employment trends have shown that while jobs in manufacturing have decreased in the past, jobs in service industries (e.g. shops, fast food outlets, hotels, catering, banking, leisure, etc.) have increased. Jobs in the computer industry have also decreased.
In the face of ever-increasing competition from international markets, many labour-intensive manufacturing companies face a harsh choice: automate or evaporate. In industry, many of the skilled jobs have reduced as machines have replaced them. For example, CNC (computer numeric control) lathes (lathes controlled by computer) can create very complex pieces of work very quickly, 24 hours a day. One skilled person can look after several CNC lathes, making sure nothing is going wrong. So one person has replaced several skilled workers. Computer-aided design (CAD) systems allow designers and engineers to create designs on screen for thousands of products ranging from the tiniest computer chip to bridges, buildings and aeroplanes. CAD is often used in conjunction with CAD to manufacture components.
Case Study – Subcontracting sector uses ICT
Precimaz was founded in 1988 and has grown to a 30-employee company with an anticipated turnover in 1997 of £1.4million. It offers a full manufacturing service from the initial design through to supply of fully finished components and assemblies. Production is predominantly on CNC (computer numeric control) turning and machine centres, and programs can be created from customer drawings or directly from CAD via modem or disk. Batches ranges from one-off up to 5000, but are more typically in the 50 to 500 bracket. In size, turned components measure up to 250mm diameter. Precimax uses Datatrack for Windows for keeping track of its annual 3000 orders. The system includes estimating and quoting, sales order processing, purchasing, job costing and delivery. The commercial director commented, “A system to handle this level of business is absolutely essential. Without it, we would be lost. It enables us to control cost and better understand our trading and manufacture. It gives us accurate information, so we can communicate with our customer on costs and deliveries quickly and with confidence.”
Source: Machinery 5/19 December 1997
Also in the past, many people used to be employed in the fabrics industries making cloth and clothing. A factory could employ hundreds of workers operating looms to weave cloth. These days one person can oversee several dozen machines that are controlled by computer.
In the car industry, on the production, robots (controlled by computers) have replaced many repetitive jobs. These machines (such as welders and assemblers) are more reliable than humans (always accurate, never needing a break or a holiday) and they work at top speed 24 hours a day. They can work in total darkness, at low temperatures, thus saving on electricity bills. They can also be used in hazardous areas, such as fume-filled rooms or radioactive environments.
In the computer industry machines are used to assemble circuit boards (computers making computers!). These used to be done by people, but computer-controlled machines are much faster and more reliable. Thousands of jobs have been lost here.
SKILLING AND DE-SKILLING
There are arguments about the effects that computerisation has had upon jobs in the last few years. Certainly, many of the low-skill repetitive jobs have disappeared (replaced by computers), and even some of the more skilful jobs are now carried out by machine. However, new jobs have been created, such as computer programmers, engineers who look after the new machines, people who design and manufacture these machines.
On the whole, the introduction of computerisation has led to the reduction in the number of jobs available and this has affected some parts of the country more than others. On the other hand computers have led to the creation of different jobs. Many of the new jobs created by computerisation are very interesting, requiring skilled and well-trained individuals. However, for some people who work with the machines, it could be argued that their jobs do not require many skills and the job is often very boring. So one unskilled person looking after machines has replaced many skilled workers. Some people argue that the skills that have taken many generations to learn and pass on to new workers will soon be lost and we then will be totally dependent on computers to do the job.
THE EFFECTS OF DOWNSIZING
The effects of downsizing and the changes brought by technology have made the job market far less flexible than it was before. Many of the skills required in the past are no longer advantageous or beneficial in today’s modern society. The biggest effect has been on the band covering upper-working and lower-middle class employment, which has been reduced in size. One of the ways of attempting to combat this problem has been a push for education with a greater number of young people entering higher education (in the UK, 1 in 3 now as opposed to 1 in 10 20 years ago).
The downsizing of corporate life has reduced job security. A professional in a large company used to be secure, but that is no longer guaranteed. This has led to greater mobility in the professional workforce, with people constantly moving around to get the best deal and the best benefits for themselves. Young professionals who are starting out on their careers are particularly mobile and will happily move long distances away from their families for education and work.
To try to compensate for the reduction in size of the traditional workplace, there has been a move to a service based economy, with a growth in the leisure and retail industries. These jobs, however, tend to be lower paid and with a much lower level of job security than the jobs that have now disappeared. They also have a relatively low level of job satisfaction and can be unrewarding. As a result there tends to be high turnover rates of staff as people move on to try to get a better position. This would be a problem for the employers, except that there is a reasonable abundance of candidates for the positions.
CHANGING EMPLOYMENT PATTERNS
With the introduction of the Internet and other communication systems, the way people work is also beginning to change. People can work from home, connecting their computers to the one at the office. This has several advantages:
- Working mothers can more easily look after children and hold down a full time job if they can work from home.
- People who live in remote areas can be in contact with others easily (e.g. video conferencing) without the need to make a long and expensive journey. This also applies to people who used to have to make frequent journeys to other countries – meetings can now happen electronically.
- Working unsocial hours. People can work the hours they want. Computers are available 24 hours a day. It might suit some people to start work at 2pm and finish at midnight. This would suit people who need to contact others in different countries.
- Some disabled people can play a much more useful and active part if they can work from their home.
Case Study – Blind engineer wins achievement award
In 1992 a young woman aged 22 and almost completely blind won an award for her achievements. She graduated from Exeter University and then went to work for Rolls Royce as a design engineer, working on the design of aero engines. She has some vision with which she can read magnified words on the screen and also uses a talking calculator, a Braille printer and an embosser for making diagrams she can trace with her fingers. She also uses a closed circuit television operated by a foot control to magnify lists of figures such as temperatures and speeds of engines under different flight conditions.
It is not just the manufacturing industry that the computer revolution has had a significant effect. Corporate life has also been affected. The ready availability of personal computers allows much of the analysis to be performed on the PC. They also allow, very simply, the means for the files needed by the company to be stored on the file-servers, where they can be protected, maintained and backed-up. The changes have forced many companies to restructure and downsize to improve their competitiveness and reduce their costs. This process has also affected white-collar workers, a group who traditionally enjoyed a great level of job security.
CHANGING LOCATIONS OF WORK
Not only are type of jobs we do changing, the location of work is changing too. When Britain changed from in the 19th century from an agricultural to an industrial society, more and more workers were forced to move from farm work into towns and large industrial centres. Today, there is no need for much of the work of an organisation to be done at a Head Office in a city; if is often more economical for it to be done in a more remote area where office space is cheap, and employees can be paid less. In fact, many large companies such as some airlines and the London Underground have their daily data processing carried out in countries like India where labour is cheap and plentiful.
Case Study – Remote Working
Injured Americans who wind up in emergency rooms at hospitals in Dallas, Denver, and Seattle may owe their lives to a group of clerical workers on a farm in Northern Ireland. Emergency room doctors dictate diagnoses and other relevant information for clerks to type into the hospital computer’s system. But clerical cover is limited at night, so the voice recording is digitised and transferred by ISDN line to the KITE (Kinawley Integrated Teleworking Enterprise) centre in the village of Kinawley, Co Fermanagh. Here it is typed and instantly transmitted back to the hospital, so that within minutes the patient’s records are up-to-date. KITE also works for Silicon Valley recruitment firms, taking CVs by e-mail and editing them into standard format. Kinawley’s working day corresponds to California’s night shift, so the finished CVs can be on the consultants’ PCs by the time they come into work. “They can double their working day at minimal cost,” says Sheila McCaffrey, KITE’s director.
Because of it’s rural location, KITE can undercut the cost of American firms by up to a third. “Office space in the heart of Silicon Valley is £100 a square foot, compared with £3 or £4 per square foot here,” says McCaffrey.
Kite is one of about 150 teleworking centres or ‘telecottages’ around Britain, many of them in disadvantaged rural areas.
Source: Paul Bray, The Sunday Times 27 April 1997
The new growth industries and job areas have been traditionally away from the heavier industry. Where companies have invested in the new technologies and industries, they have tended to site in areas where there is already a presence of the right type so that that is a vast amount of suitably qualified staff. These areas attract the promising individuals who hope to make their career in those fields. The areas that are in industrial decline suffer from depletion, as they are less attractive proposition for investment. A major impact of following the growth areas leads to deprivation of other regions.
The one exception to this trend seems to be the development of the call centre. These have developed over the last few years. The developments in telephone systems, particularly the conversion to digital systems and the adoption of the fibre optic systems have allowed the development of the call centres. Telephone systems allow hundreds or even thousands of calls to come home into a single number simultaneously and to be handled, routed and processed without requiring the massive amounts of wiring that would be required 20 years ago. They make it feasible to put all the systems and people required to handle customer queries and so forth in a single location. The people handling the calls are being used to enter information up onto computers allowing the system to process requests, manage orders and so on. Increasingly banking and insurance is being handles over the telephone using call centres. Because the overheads are lower than a high street operation they can offer better deals and therefore attract more business. The people manning the call centre are typically acting under the instruction of the computer, acting as speech recognition units for it. This requires low level of skill and training, though does require a level of literacy. The reason call centres are growing in relatively depressed areas of the country is that it is cheaper to build in these areas and there is less competition for the staff. The work tends to be very pressured and produces a high staff turnover, especially where the monitoring of individuals is strict.
Of the 2.2 million teleworkers the government’s Office for National Statistics identifies, 1.8 million rely on computers and phones to such an extent they cannot do their job at all without them. Nearly half the latter, or 43%, were self-employed, a group which constitutes only 11% of the workforce at large. But 55% of the survey’s sample is in employment, a proportion that has shot up over the four years of the survey. The trend would seem to indicate rising numbers of people whose burden is such that they have to take work home at the weekend. In other words, the progress of teleworking in the mainstream could well be contributing into the intrusion of work into employees’ personal lives.
Still the survey indicates a steady shift towards more flexible habits of work, a trend that is likely to become more pronounced in the years ahead. It also highlights gender differences in teleworking. Two thirds of the teleworkers identified in the survey were men, against 53% of the workforce as a whole.
This, it suggests, is because men still predominate in jobs – such as senior management, the professions and skilled trades – where teleworking is either more accepted or more necessary.
Most people are also taking their work home. More than two million people in the UK rely on phones and computers to work at least one day a week at home, new research suggests. The figure, drawn from the data collected in spring 2001, is an increase of more than two thirds on comparable figures from 1997. They now make up just over 7% of the UK workforce.
The statistics suggest that the situation in the UK is roughly halfway up the scale as far as European countries are concerned. European Union figures indicate that in Finland, over 16 % of the workforce qualifies as a teleworker, with more than half working at least one full day a week. Sweden and the Netherlands are not far behind. Less than 3% of the workforce in France and Spain indulge in the teleworking, and very barely a quarter of these take their work home from the office.
HEALTH AND SAFETY ISSUES
As computers have been more widely used, certain health issues have become obvious. Some people using keyboards began complaining of painful joints around the hands. In the beginning no one took any notice but now the problem is recognised as RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury). Also using monitors for several hours a day can affect people’s sight, causing headaches and eyestrain – and eventually more permanent injuries. Problems of glare, flicker and focus of the screen can cause these problems. To help prevent problems, manufacturers now sell monitors that only emit low levels of radiation. Employers have also had to become more aware of these possible problems (a journalist recently sued his employers for £250, 000 because of RSI).
POSSIBLE FUTURE CONSEQUENCES
1. Economic Imbalance
As jobs that require computer skills are very high paid compared to other jobs, the economic difference between people in society is increasing very rapidly. If these trends continue then this will lead to an economically imbalanced society.
2. Decreasing Value Of Human Interaction
Increasing use of computers in our everyday life has eliminated a need to interact with actual human beings in many transactions. This trend will lead out society to a society where social human interactions will be less
CONCLUSION
The changes being brought by computers have fundamentally changed the shape of working life. The biggest problem is that it has created an underclass that has fallen out of the bottom of the job market. They are effectively excluded from economic activity and live in poverty. Because of their lack of education and their increasing disconnection from mainstream society they are becoming less and less attractive as prospects for employment and are reliant on state handouts to survive. They do not have the skills to survive in the wider society and have to be supported by it. The result, not surprisingly, social problems and crime.
The changes being brought by computers have fundamentally changed the shape of working life. The manual process of drawing, designing, pen and paper has disappeared and been replaced by the computer. Computers have speeded up processes in today’s work places. Computers are penetrating our everyday lives and are here to stay. Several benefits that arise due to its emergence are:
- Creation of indirect jobs in various support sectors
- Computers makes work more exportable, and this leads to creation of jobs across all countries
- Increased product creatively leading to high income and industrial levels
The adoption of computers in the workplace has made them a valuable commodity. It is a tool that has enhanced the way society conducts it’s day-to-day business. The point is now can we live without them?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Information Technology and Society, A Reader (Sage publications 1996)
- Computing in the information age (1996) John Wiley and sons inc.
- ICT and Society, (1994) International Thompson Publishing
GLOSSARY
SKILLING The need to re-learn new skills, and also the replacement of the unskilled workers with the skilled
DESKILLING The loss of skills due to the introduction of computers, whereby the skills previously learnt are no longer required or outdated
DOWNSIZING To reduce in number of size: a corporation that downsized its personnel to response to a poor economy
RESTRUCTURE To make a change in an organization
