Staffing and Human Resource Development in IBM - Case Study Example

IBM HR MANAGEMENT Name Institution Date Staffing & Human Resource Development in IBM Background One of the hallmarks of the IBM Company is Innovation. It should therefore not be a surprise that IBM, the New York based Armonk giant technology company is and has been creating web based tools one after another commonly known as “On Demand Workplace” which are meant to polish the repute of the IBM companies’ and at the same time help the company in attracting and retaining capacity. For instance, one such tool known as “Opportunity Marketplace” is meant to match Big Blue (IBM) Employees, with their ultimate jobs in an effort to make it simpler for the company to assist its employees to be able to align their skills with the opportunities that are to be had and in turn to continue its policy of promoting where possible (from within), its immense workforce of over three hundred thousand globally. This effort which is based on a combination of both branded and third party purveyor technology enables employees to execute a self assessment through the company’s HR portal. The assessment tool which is based on peoplesoft technology institutes the employees’ capabilities, abilities and education and job inclinations (Savvy-E Companies 2004, pg.1-2) On the other hand, IBM has created a categorization to identify the abilities and capabilities that are required for its entire five hundred job roles. This categorization enables IBM to match employee skills with the requirements of hiring him or her. Employees are therefore in a position to ask for job alerts via Email for job openings that match their skills and managers in turn can instantly be informed. In the past the opposite was true, since managers had to go through a tedious process of listing openings and employees had to go out looking for the ones that suited them. But now, according to IBM director Silvio Lanaro, matching employee’s skills with the right job is automatic. Opportunity Marketplace which is much more that simply a stylish job posing mechanism also enables managers to monitor workplace imbalances related to human capital in the various departments and to ensure that they have the right employees with the right skills in the right job (Savvy-E Companies 2004, pg. 1-2). It is reported that IBM intends to make available to other external candidates the opportunity Marketplace tool which will be an enabler to them to use it to assess their skills with the aid of the HR online evaluation tools portal and match their skills with the available job openings on the basis of IBM’s description of the job. As an accompaniment to the Opportunity Marketplace tool is another new exclusive tool known as “learning @ IBM” that utilizes the IBM employee job standards to organize and group and also to create paths that specify learning course for employees which are based on their current jobs, gaps in their skills, and career aspirations. Initially this had been a wearisome task of going through IBM’s broad inventory of online as well as classroom training courses by the HR department and the employees themselves. But this history has now changed thanks to “learning @ IBM” since employees now get electronic reports on courses that they are directly linked to career wise and which are related to their learning intent (Savvy-E Companies 2004, pg. 1-2). According to Ed Higgins, the HR I/T manager at IBM, Learning @ IBM also save employees the hustle of going to look for educational openings since it enables them to be presented to the employees. To date, IBM more that 50% of all IBM training is done via e-learning and employees are able to access thousands of e-learning resources through Global Campus a database that has search options which also connects the company’s entire learning recommendations as well as capital including web units, online collaboration, e learning, models, peripheral periodicals and classroom instructions (Savvy-E Companies 2004, pg. 1-2). IBM however offers far much more than just the pairing of employees with the right jobs and learning opportunities. It also offers complete HR self service aid such as incorporated private information, employees benefits, skills improvement plans and even performance evaluations. On top of this, there is a portal for managers which enable managers to get access to a critical mass of information and perform online studies as well as report on and gain insight into the company’s workforce in order to maximize talent (Savvy-E Companies 2004, pg. 1-2). Having gained an insight into IBM human resource innovations in this introduction, this paper is going to analyze the Human Resource management Analysis-Theory in Practice The pillars of IBM’s Success Diversity When Lou Gerstner is spoken of, many of us think of the turnaround of IBM and when IBM is talked about, we think of a grand company tale. However among all this glamour of a great company lies a not so much spoken of fundamental part which is the story of the people behind the success story of IBM (Thomas 2004, pg. 1-12) This is a story that has excitedly changed the components of an already miscellaneous corporation and in the process created a mass of wealth amounting to billions of dollars. In 1993, when Gerstner took over the reins of IBM, the company already had a long record of evolutionary management as far as the right of workers and employment opportunities were concerned. In fact, few of the executives could by then attribute this success to the diversified workforce that IBM had and resonate it with the company’s premeditated focal point in Human resource management and staffing strategy. According to Dave Ulrich et al, HR has been making strides from administrators to business cohorts to leaders of transformation over the years as part of the visionary and foreseeable future to anticipate future changes in the global trends and the business environment (Ulrich et al 1997, pg. 12-16), and Gerstner took a great interest in the senior management of IBM and feeling that it did not match the market diversity that existed among the company’s customers and even employees, he decided to create a balance by launching a miscellany team in 1995 that became the backbone of IBM’s HR strategy and remained so to date. Instead of keeping mum about the disparities that existed among its employees at that time, IBM chose to deal with them by hiring eight teams to look into different groups of employees such as gays, Asians, lesbians, and women with an aim of bringing to light and making these disparities that could be understood and to find ways of attracting and retaining a wide range of employees as well as customers. This process involved a lot of work, time and money and it was expected since change in management does not come easily (Phillips & Gully 2012, pg. 211). It didn’t come easily and the first team took effect almost two years after the arrival of Gerstner. But IBM is today completely different from the IBM of yester years precisely 1995 when this effort began. Female executives the world over have increased by over 300% and the numbers of ethnic minorities who are executives in the US has increased by over 200%. The Worldwide Management Council (WMC) of IBM, which is the board that make all the strategic decisions of the company has about 52% women, ethnic minorities and no US citizens and the Organization has generally been able to achieve an increase of transgender (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) executive members by over 700%. The number of executives with disabilities has since tripled. It is however important to note that IBM’s diversity concerns much more than expanding the aptitude groupings. According to Gerstner, it is all about understanding the company’s diverse and multi-cultured markets through constant search for ways of efficiently reaching a wide ranging clientele base and IBM, there is no denying it, and has achieved bottom line results. To site an example, IBM has been able to achieve great organizational market development through its women’s team (a group that is based in the US which is focused on growing a market comprising of multi-cultural and women possessed commerce) as well as other communities that have been established by the company. The company uses various forms of tactful means among them forming partnerships with purveyors with an aim of providing sales and service sustainability to small and midsized business enterprises, a market niche that is concentrated with female and minority customers. Increasing competition and changing dynamics of workforce demographics coupled with a modification towards information based employment are forcing companies to place more on improving the capabilities of their personnel and efficiency. Emphasis is being put on the Human Resource (HR) function of organizations to go beyond deliverance of cost efficient managerial services and offer expert knowledge on how they can balance their human capital to come up with truly differentiated market places (IBM Institute for Business Value 2007, Pg. 1-2). Facing such challenges and many more have been the core values of many resource management institutions and many organizations have been overhauling in an effort to provide more strategic approaches to their businesses (IBM Institute for Business Value 2007, pg. 1-2). In the year 2001, IBM gained revenue of over $300 million compared with %10 million in 1998 and in the year 2001, IBM began an initiative that was focused on making its products more available and to take full advantage of a new government legislation, an alteration to the national rehabilitation law that necessitated that government agencies make handy a criterion to award federal contracts and IBM has been able to achieve an increase in revenue of over 1 billion dollars since 2004 to date. The diversity that IBM has embraced has been a source of great business opportunity. Constructive Disruption Gerstner was able to give guidance that diversity was a strategic goal on its own right and he was aware that building task forces was an enabling tool in attracting employees. He therefore convened various teams like we have seen in the last subsection as a means to solve a wide range of strategic options. He also used the same method of refinement in the achievement of IBM’s objectives that were based on diversity. This was with the assistance of his juniors a way of making people understand that there was a truly new thing that was happening. The company is has a long history of being blind to differences and collecting information related to demographics is used only as a means of making sure that the hiring and promotion procedures within the company’s framework are without favor or prejudice. This new way of approaching issues has in turn the effect of calling attention to differences and making improvements to the business which is a different approach. IBM also chose a strategic day to kickoff their campaign- Bastille Day. Each team had 145 to 20 senior management members with a balanced from across the board and consisted of demographics that ensures equal representation of the various groups that we mentioned in the previous section (Thomas, 2004 Pg. 1-12), Asians, Africans, gays, etc, just to mention but a few and eligibility comprised of one, - the attainment of the rank of executive and two, - being a member of the constitution and members were encouraged to speak about their experiences and see the whole issue as an opportunity to create a difference and get rid of obstacles that they were likely to face in their careers. These teams or taskforces were given the task of collecting data and knowing the needs of their constituencies. The data was mainly on labor and markets and the interpreting this information is what led to what has been know as the vital few which were findings of the teams and were used in the shaping of the thinking of the teams’ on business development opportunities. Pillars of Change Sustainable corporate change can only occur if it is engaged to the maximum with the factoring in of the following; the support of company leaders, a committed employees base and management practices (Noe & Winkler 2009, pg. 361). These should be incorporated and aligned with the efforts and well planned case for business action and IBM’s diversity benefitted from all the above. Besides the company’s CEO leadership did not come to an end when Gerstner left. Going Global Over 50 years today have passed since IBM initiated the first equal opportunity policy that was aimed at equity in the hiring of employees regardless of color or creed in 1953. This policy agreement came as a result of the desire by the company to build manufacturing plants in the house. According to the then CEO, Watson, the company was no longer going to have separate units or facilities, but it was rather going to have equal facilities. One year later, Brown brought to an end separate education and eleven years later the civil war began in 1964 just before the Civil Rights Act. With this kind of history, it is easy to tell that the future of IBM’S diversity is becoming more and more global each day and that it is going to be the bedrock of strategic reforms that will address issues facing the company all over the world (Thomas 2004 pg. 1-12). This diversity will embrace all global cultures. In Europe for example, IBM has been experimenting on the growing numbers of the ethnic minorities and in Asia-Pacific, the programs have been addressing the differences between countries and / or regions which are basic in realizing continuous global boundaries. Link between Diversity Goals and Business Goals From the beginning Gerstner and Child insisted on task forces that created efforts linking IBM’s diversity goals with its business strategy and the efforts of the task forces have led to a series of major events. For example, IBM can now boast of major achievements in the areas of building a clientele base among women owned businesses which have quickly expanded among ASIANS, Blacks, Hispanics, senior citizens, Native Americans, etc. The area of development of markets organizations has grown its revenue from $10 million in 1998 to hundreds of millions of dollars today. IBM can also boast of the creation of executive partnering programs that are targeted at specific segments of the populations, such as women. Supplier diversity has also been greatly affected by the work of the task forces and while the company has been working tirelessly over the years to establish relationships with small owned and medium enterprises, regardless of who owns them, the work of the task forces has extended the focus of IBM’s purveyor miscellany to include constituencies and give new approaches on the specific challenges that face them. The aim of the supplier diversity program is to create a level performance ground. However, it is important to note that contracts of procurement are given on merit of the bid, (price / quality), and not on diversity of the vendor. Conclusion The initiative dubbed “the taskforce” is an initiative that is continuous and is wide reaching and has extensive effects. And as much as IBM grew from these efforts so did the human beings that were involved grow in their capacities to comprehend, express and take action upon issues that they identified in their groups and there can never be any doubts as to the importance of the management of the research organization since there is a need for divergent views. This affects employees and especially the company. The day to day handling of employees of IBM is one which engages them one on one and serves as a tremendous maturity towards personnel growth and the growth of the company. The IBM strategy is developmental in more than one way in the direction of Development and achievement of an organization’s goals. Having eight task forces will mean that out of 52 top participant executives there is always a critical mass that is strategically connected to the issues. For IBM, that makes enormous industry logic since the entire effort was build upon the purpose of the organization to develop deeper insights into it main markets with a clear and direct mindset that is tied to two of Gerstner’s key utterances namely; one, IBM needed to bring its products closer to a critical mass of customers and become more customer centric and two, IBM needed to focus more on talent attraction, retention, development and promotion and on both of these measures, the company has come really far. References IBM Institute for Business Value, 2007, A new Approach, a New Capability: The Strategic side of Human Resources. IBM Global Business Services , 1-12. Savvy-E Companies, 2004, World's most E-Savvy HR Organizations' contest, Human Resource Executive , 1-2. Thomas, D, 2004, Diversity as Strategy, Harvard Business Review , 1-12. Ulrich, G, Losey, M, & Lakes, G, 1997, Tomorrow’s HR Management, John Wiley and Sons, Inc, 12-16 Noe, A, & Winkler, C, 2009), Employee Training and Development: for Australian and New Zealand Sydney, Sydney: McGraw Hill. 361. Phillips, J, & Gully, S, 2012, Strategic Staffing, New Jersey: Pearson, Prentice Hall, 211 Read More