Abstract
There is an overall lack of research regarding the experiences and views of bank workers
regarding the digitalisation of their service labour in the South African banking sector. This
dissertation aimed to identify the manner in which digitalisation transformed the service work of
bank tellers, its effects on the bank tellers and their responses to those effects when employed at a
South African bank. To address this, qualitative research methods were used to gather data
through virtual interviews with eight bank workers of a South African bank identified through
purposive and snowball sampling.
The findings showed that the role of bank teller is now partially digitalised, with services which
were physically provided by only bank tellers, now fragmented between advanced technologies
and human bank tellers. This has transformed somewhat the traditional labour process as clients
currently access the digitalised services online without involving bank tellers, while bank tellers
currently conduct new and undigitalised services using mostly computer systems rather than the
paper-based system. This significantly reshaped how the bank tellers relate to clients, other bank
workers and managers, involving a strong component of undigitalised emotional labour exerted by
the bank tellers towards each group. The findings further revealed that this partial digitalisation of
the bank teller role affects the research participants negatively by reducing their job security as the
number of bank tellers in the branches is being decreased with more clients utilising the digital
platform to access the banks’ products and services, further causing occupational stress among
the bank tellers. On the other hand, the conducting of new and undigitalised services affect them
positively by exposing them to new tasks and roles, as they are upskilled and reskilled. It further
transformed their working skills when new systems were implemented, accompanied by an
increase in the bank’s requirement for the bank tellers to be in possession of emotional skills that
enable the attribute of emotional labour that cannot be digitalised. The findings also show that the
teller participants responded to these effects of digitalisation by calmly discussing their concerns
over the reduced security of their job with their leaders. Their choice was to leave the teller role for
other roles that will be less stressful or less risky, or be reskilled by entering new roles and
attending training programs. This exposes the idea that digitalisation in the banking sector is not
always absolute, but sometimes partial, resulting in uneven impacts on the traditional labour
process of bank tellers.