Track: Automation and Agility

Abstract

Service delivery automation is seen as the new norm that uses automated service delivery channels and advanced technologies to provide services to customers. This paper looks at the influence and impact of adopting service delivery automation on the potentiality of job losses or unemployment in the South African banking industry, with a focus on the five prominent banking institutions in the country. An analysis of the employees' perceptions of the phenomenon at hand was conducted to determine whether service delivery automation brings along unemployment through job losses. A conceptual framework was developed to lay the ground for hypotheses to test the model developed for this paper. Through the hypothesis testing, it was found that there is a significant relationship between service delivery automation and the generation of job losses, whereby the more banking institutions integrate automation into their structural business model, the more certain category of job opportunities are lost or displaced.