Employee Retention of International Business Machines : International Business Machines (IBM) (NYSE: IBM) is an American multinational technology and consulting firm headquartered in Armonk, New York. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.[2]
The company was founded in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation through a merger of four companies: the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company, the Computing Scale Corporation, and the Bundy Manufacturing Company.[3][4]. CTR adopted the name International Business Machines in 1924, using a name previously designated to CTR's subsidiary in Canada and later South America. Its distinctive culture and product branding has given it the nickname Big Blue.
In 2010, IBM was ranked the 20th largest firm in the U.S. by Fortune and the 33rd largest globally by Forbes.[5][6] Other rankings that year include #1 company for leaders (Fortune), #2 best global brand (Interbrand), #3 green company (Newsweek), #15 most admired company (Fortune), and #18 most innovative company (Fast Company).[7] IBM employs almost 400,000 employees (sometimes referred to as "IBMers") in over 200 countries, with occupations including scientists, engineers, consultants, and sales professionals.[8]
IBM holds more patents than any other U.S.-based technology company and has nine research laboratories worldwide.[9] Its employees have garnered five Nobel Prizes, four Turing Awards, nine National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science.[10] The company has undergone several organizational changes since its inception, acquiring companies like SPSS (2009) and PwC consulting (2002) and spinning off companies like Lexmark.
IBM's headquarter complex is located in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States.[21][22][23] The 283,000 square foot IBM building has three levels of custom curtainwall. The building is located on a 25 acre site.[24] IBM has been headquartered in Armonk since 1964.[citation needed]
The company has nine research labs worldwide—Almaden, Austin, Brazil, China, Haifa, India , Tokyo, Watson (New York), and Zurich—with Watson (dedicated in 1961) serving as headquarters for the research division and the site of its annual meeting. Other campus installations include towers in Montreal, Paris, and Atlanta; software labs in Raleigh-Durham, Rome and Toronto; buildings in Chicago, Johannesburg, and Seattle; and facilities in Hakozaki and Yamato. The company also operates the IBM Scientific Center, the Hursley House, the Canada Head Office Building, IBM Rochester, and the Somers Office Complex. The company's contributions to architecture and design, including Chicago's 330 North Wabash building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, were recognized with the 1990 Honor Award from the National Building Museum.[25]
IBM's Board of Directors, with 14 members, is responsible for the overall management of the company. With Cathie Black's resignation from the board in November 2010, the remaining 13 members (along with their affiliation and year of joining the board) are as follows: Alain J. P. Belda '08 (Alcoa), William R. Brody '07 (Salk Institute / Johns Hopkins University), Kenneth Chenault '98 (American Express), Michael L. Eskew '05 (UPS), Shirley Ann Jackson '05 (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Andrew N. Liveris '10 (Dow Chemical), W. James McNerney, Jr. '09 (Boeing), James W. Owens '06 (Caterpillar), Samuel J. Palmisano '00 (IBM), Joan Spero '04 (Doris Duke Charitable Foundation), Sidney Taurel '01 (Eli Lilly), and Lorenzo Zambrano '03 (Cemex).
Achieving higher-than-average employee take-up levels for a voluntary benefits scheme is no mean feat. But by using the latest technology, a robust communications strategy and offering an extensive range of perks, IBM UK has enticed 73% of its 20,000-strong workforce to take part in its voluntary benefits scheme. This is pretty impressive considering the average take-up for a blue-chip company is around the 50% mark.
Voluntary benefits and retail discounts are not new to the information technology giant, which launched its first scheme, offering holiday trading and online discounts from 90 retailers, in 2004. But the firm’s provision has changed beyond recognition since then.
The company launched its current voluntary benefits scheme, IBM Rewards (provided by Asperity Employee Benefits, which took over from IBM’s previous provider, BringMe) at the beginning of 2008. The scheme gives staff access to discounted items from 1,300 different retailers.
Employee discounts
Through the scheme, employees can choose to shop online and take up in-store cards that they can load with various amounts to spend at specific retailers. They are then entitled to a discount, ranging from 5% to 10%, on the amount spent.
Discounted retail vouchers can also be purchased through the scheme, enabling staff to make a direct saving on goods from participating retailers.
Staff who shop online are also entitled to cashback on some of the things they buy. Instead of obtaining a straight discount on a purchase, cashback is paid into an online account, from where it can be withdrawn as a cheque or bank transfer.
Louise Phillips, IBM UK’s European HR benefits leader, says: “It is about using IBM’s place in the marketplace. We have a large number of employees [so] how can we give benefit to them? I guess, ultimately, by giving them a scheme that enables them to make savings throughout the year.”
Range of core benefits
IBM’s voluntary benefits scheme sits alongside a range of core benefits and perks offered through its flexible benefits plan You, which is provided by Mercer. Employees can enrol annually into the flex plan, which also includes salary sacrifice arrangements around some employee-funded benefits, such as childcare vouchers and bikes-for-work.
Meanwhile, the trust-based defined contribution (DC) pension scheme (which has been awarded a NAPF Pension Quality Mark), with employee and employer contributions, and private medical insurance (PMI) are offered to all IBM staff as employer-funded core benefits. “It is about making sure we have a full [benefits] portfolio for employees,” says Phillips. “It is about choice and flexibility. One of our key drivers is around employee engagement and satisfaction. How can we best achieve these with only an annual-enrolment [flex] scheme? “By enhancing our discount scheme and utilising innovative technology, we can provide an offering that drives satisfaction and engagement, but also fits in with employees’ purchasing decisions as it is available all year around.”
Tailored to lifestyles
As well as complementing the firm’s flex scheme, IBM Rewards is increasingly being tailored to suit employees’ lifestyles and affinity with online media. For example, IBM has set up a Twitter page to update staff on the scheme. It also uses daily news alerts to tell employees when new providers have been added to the plan.
“This really drives employees to get better information,” says Phillips. “It is obviously a media medium they want to get involved in because they signed up for it. It also allows us to target different types of employee. The number of staff following Twitter on a weekly and daily basis is increasing.”
An IBM community page on the scheme’s website has been endorsed by company HR director Jonathan Ferrar. He appears on video, explaining the advantages of the voluntary benefits plan and how it works. Interviews have also been recorded with employees who use the site, and anyone who posts a review advising others on how to shop online is rewarded with £50 cashback to spend within the scheme.
IBM is now planning to go one step further and introduce a personalised home page for users of the scheme this month. “If you are a user, you will go into the site and select the key areas you are looking at,” says Phillips. “If an employee has a child, they can select all the items relating to that.”
Google maps technology has been added to the website so employees can easily find the location of their nearest provider or retailer. “We are trying to use all the technology available to us to bring the site alive and have much greater usability for the employee,” says Phillips. “We recognise that our staff are very busy and want to make the best use of their time.”
Management information
Management information fed back from Asperity on how employees are using the scheme is very important to IBM, and Phillips says this is one of the main reasons for the scheme’s success.
“Management information is absolutely essential in understanding where our employees use the scheme and where they do not,” she explains. “It helps us decide where to remove and add offers in a way that is attractive to staff and also fits in with our overall strategy. The perks that we offer through the scheme match the IBM strategy and image.”
Employees’ response to benefits has always been important to IBM UK and it has consistently asked for such feedback. In 2007, for example, the company actively sought employees’ views to boost understanding of their benefits packages and drive take-up. It invited all employees to attend focus groups, which were held at six of the firm’s major sites in the UK.
The organisation was particularly interested in hearing the views of staff who had previously complained about, or praised, the benefits on offer. It also provided employees with information on the benefits it was offering at the time.
Certainly, IBM UK wants to have all relevant data at its disposal when deciding how to adapt its benefits package to suit its employees’ needs and their preferred methods of receiving information
Career History:
Louise Phillips, HR and benefits leader for Europe at IBM UK, has been with the company for 12 years and has held a variety of HR and benefits roles.
When she joined IBM UK in 1998, Phillips took on the challenge of project-managing and delivering IBM’s global HR compensation and benefit tools and workplace healthrelated projects.
In 2002, Phillips took on management and leadership roles for IBM projects within Europe. Three years later, she became global engagement manager for the organisation’s outsourcing team.
Phillips, who became a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in 2007, says: “The benefits offerings that we have match the IBM strategy and image, which are both ethically and environmentally sound.”
IBM at a glance:
IBM was created in the United States nearly 100 years ago following the merger of three information recording companies.
The Computing Tabulating Recording Company, as it was then known, specialised in providing stock pricing data to traders using punch-card tabulating machines. It also designed and developed products to record, process, communicate, store and retrieve information.
Today, the firm claims to be the world’s largest IT and consulting services company and operates in more than 170 countries worldwide.
IBM was established in the UK in 1951. Its clients now include sole proprietorships, government and global organisations.
Most of IBM’s enterprise business is in industries that are broadly grouped into six sectors – financial services, public, industrial, distribution, communications, and small and medium-sized businesses.
During the second quarter of 2009, IBM’s global revenue of $23.3bn was 13% down on the same period in 2008. For the quarter, the company’s gross profit margin stood at 45.5%, up 2.3 points from last year. Meanwhile, its net income stood at $3.1bn, an increase of 12%.
Traditionally, you can't just walk into IBM or Microsoft with resume and expect a call back based on that. Every one I know inside these places references the "internal" referral as the reason they got in, not a random submission of resume. This takes the traditional tape away; "you" dealt with the "magic" connection to the team members first, then HR.
Oracle is the traditional way (again, know this from direct experience with people that work there) where your filter into the ORACLE community is through HR first, not the immediate team needing your services.
Unless you are a contractor, when you are in IBM or MICROSOFT, you’re in. With ORACLE, it’s measuring your performance on an on-going basis. ,
I've seen 2 generations of families, friends knowing friends and unusual relationships active in Microsoft and IBM, but there credentials are all over the place. Meanwhile, Oracle seems focused on what you know & how well you do it, so you have a lot of people with no direct connections other than their credentials working there.
Internal connections get people in and they are exposed to rich programs to wear a hat in multiple departments. You can go in for sales at MSN and be a systems analyst coming out. But at oracle you go in as a programmer, your title carries programmer for the lifetime you are there even if you get to management level.
I can’t say Top Management globally affects the employee retention, it’s the acquisition practiced; either you’re married into the company or acquired. From experience, MICROSOFT and IBM makes you part of the family through connections, ORACLE qualifies you to be part of theirs. The corporate need vs desire directly affects your
The company was founded in 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation through a merger of four companies: the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company, the Computing Scale Corporation, and the Bundy Manufacturing Company.[3][4]. CTR adopted the name International Business Machines in 1924, using a name previously designated to CTR's subsidiary in Canada and later South America. Its distinctive culture and product branding has given it the nickname Big Blue.
In 2010, IBM was ranked the 20th largest firm in the U.S. by Fortune and the 33rd largest globally by Forbes.[5][6] Other rankings that year include #1 company for leaders (Fortune), #2 best global brand (Interbrand), #3 green company (Newsweek), #15 most admired company (Fortune), and #18 most innovative company (Fast Company).[7] IBM employs almost 400,000 employees (sometimes referred to as "IBMers") in over 200 countries, with occupations including scientists, engineers, consultants, and sales professionals.[8]
IBM holds more patents than any other U.S.-based technology company and has nine research laboratories worldwide.[9] Its employees have garnered five Nobel Prizes, four Turing Awards, nine National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science.[10] The company has undergone several organizational changes since its inception, acquiring companies like SPSS (2009) and PwC consulting (2002) and spinning off companies like Lexmark.
IBM's headquarter complex is located in Armonk, Town of North Castle, New York, United States.[21][22][23] The 283,000 square foot IBM building has three levels of custom curtainwall. The building is located on a 25 acre site.[24] IBM has been headquartered in Armonk since 1964.[citation needed]
The company has nine research labs worldwide—Almaden, Austin, Brazil, China, Haifa, India , Tokyo, Watson (New York), and Zurich—with Watson (dedicated in 1961) serving as headquarters for the research division and the site of its annual meeting. Other campus installations include towers in Montreal, Paris, and Atlanta; software labs in Raleigh-Durham, Rome and Toronto; buildings in Chicago, Johannesburg, and Seattle; and facilities in Hakozaki and Yamato. The company also operates the IBM Scientific Center, the Hursley House, the Canada Head Office Building, IBM Rochester, and the Somers Office Complex. The company's contributions to architecture and design, including Chicago's 330 North Wabash building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, were recognized with the 1990 Honor Award from the National Building Museum.[25]
IBM's Board of Directors, with 14 members, is responsible for the overall management of the company. With Cathie Black's resignation from the board in November 2010, the remaining 13 members (along with their affiliation and year of joining the board) are as follows: Alain J. P. Belda '08 (Alcoa), William R. Brody '07 (Salk Institute / Johns Hopkins University), Kenneth Chenault '98 (American Express), Michael L. Eskew '05 (UPS), Shirley Ann Jackson '05 (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Andrew N. Liveris '10 (Dow Chemical), W. James McNerney, Jr. '09 (Boeing), James W. Owens '06 (Caterpillar), Samuel J. Palmisano '00 (IBM), Joan Spero '04 (Doris Duke Charitable Foundation), Sidney Taurel '01 (Eli Lilly), and Lorenzo Zambrano '03 (Cemex).
Achieving higher-than-average employee take-up levels for a voluntary benefits scheme is no mean feat. But by using the latest technology, a robust communications strategy and offering an extensive range of perks, IBM UK has enticed 73% of its 20,000-strong workforce to take part in its voluntary benefits scheme. This is pretty impressive considering the average take-up for a blue-chip company is around the 50% mark.
Voluntary benefits and retail discounts are not new to the information technology giant, which launched its first scheme, offering holiday trading and online discounts from 90 retailers, in 2004. But the firm’s provision has changed beyond recognition since then.
The company launched its current voluntary benefits scheme, IBM Rewards (provided by Asperity Employee Benefits, which took over from IBM’s previous provider, BringMe) at the beginning of 2008. The scheme gives staff access to discounted items from 1,300 different retailers.
Employee discounts
Through the scheme, employees can choose to shop online and take up in-store cards that they can load with various amounts to spend at specific retailers. They are then entitled to a discount, ranging from 5% to 10%, on the amount spent.
Discounted retail vouchers can also be purchased through the scheme, enabling staff to make a direct saving on goods from participating retailers.
Staff who shop online are also entitled to cashback on some of the things they buy. Instead of obtaining a straight discount on a purchase, cashback is paid into an online account, from where it can be withdrawn as a cheque or bank transfer.
Louise Phillips, IBM UK’s European HR benefits leader, says: “It is about using IBM’s place in the marketplace. We have a large number of employees [so] how can we give benefit to them? I guess, ultimately, by giving them a scheme that enables them to make savings throughout the year.”
Range of core benefits
IBM’s voluntary benefits scheme sits alongside a range of core benefits and perks offered through its flexible benefits plan You, which is provided by Mercer. Employees can enrol annually into the flex plan, which also includes salary sacrifice arrangements around some employee-funded benefits, such as childcare vouchers and bikes-for-work.
Meanwhile, the trust-based defined contribution (DC) pension scheme (which has been awarded a NAPF Pension Quality Mark), with employee and employer contributions, and private medical insurance (PMI) are offered to all IBM staff as employer-funded core benefits. “It is about making sure we have a full [benefits] portfolio for employees,” says Phillips. “It is about choice and flexibility. One of our key drivers is around employee engagement and satisfaction. How can we best achieve these with only an annual-enrolment [flex] scheme? “By enhancing our discount scheme and utilising innovative technology, we can provide an offering that drives satisfaction and engagement, but also fits in with employees’ purchasing decisions as it is available all year around.”
Tailored to lifestyles
As well as complementing the firm’s flex scheme, IBM Rewards is increasingly being tailored to suit employees’ lifestyles and affinity with online media. For example, IBM has set up a Twitter page to update staff on the scheme. It also uses daily news alerts to tell employees when new providers have been added to the plan.
“This really drives employees to get better information,” says Phillips. “It is obviously a media medium they want to get involved in because they signed up for it. It also allows us to target different types of employee. The number of staff following Twitter on a weekly and daily basis is increasing.”
An IBM community page on the scheme’s website has been endorsed by company HR director Jonathan Ferrar. He appears on video, explaining the advantages of the voluntary benefits plan and how it works. Interviews have also been recorded with employees who use the site, and anyone who posts a review advising others on how to shop online is rewarded with £50 cashback to spend within the scheme.
IBM is now planning to go one step further and introduce a personalised home page for users of the scheme this month. “If you are a user, you will go into the site and select the key areas you are looking at,” says Phillips. “If an employee has a child, they can select all the items relating to that.”
Google maps technology has been added to the website so employees can easily find the location of their nearest provider or retailer. “We are trying to use all the technology available to us to bring the site alive and have much greater usability for the employee,” says Phillips. “We recognise that our staff are very busy and want to make the best use of their time.”
Management information
Management information fed back from Asperity on how employees are using the scheme is very important to IBM, and Phillips says this is one of the main reasons for the scheme’s success.
“Management information is absolutely essential in understanding where our employees use the scheme and where they do not,” she explains. “It helps us decide where to remove and add offers in a way that is attractive to staff and also fits in with our overall strategy. The perks that we offer through the scheme match the IBM strategy and image.”
Employees’ response to benefits has always been important to IBM UK and it has consistently asked for such feedback. In 2007, for example, the company actively sought employees’ views to boost understanding of their benefits packages and drive take-up. It invited all employees to attend focus groups, which were held at six of the firm’s major sites in the UK.
The organisation was particularly interested in hearing the views of staff who had previously complained about, or praised, the benefits on offer. It also provided employees with information on the benefits it was offering at the time.
Certainly, IBM UK wants to have all relevant data at its disposal when deciding how to adapt its benefits package to suit its employees’ needs and their preferred methods of receiving information
Career History:
Louise Phillips, HR and benefits leader for Europe at IBM UK, has been with the company for 12 years and has held a variety of HR and benefits roles.
When she joined IBM UK in 1998, Phillips took on the challenge of project-managing and delivering IBM’s global HR compensation and benefit tools and workplace healthrelated projects.
In 2002, Phillips took on management and leadership roles for IBM projects within Europe. Three years later, she became global engagement manager for the organisation’s outsourcing team.
Phillips, who became a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in 2007, says: “The benefits offerings that we have match the IBM strategy and image, which are both ethically and environmentally sound.”
IBM at a glance:
IBM was created in the United States nearly 100 years ago following the merger of three information recording companies.
The Computing Tabulating Recording Company, as it was then known, specialised in providing stock pricing data to traders using punch-card tabulating machines. It also designed and developed products to record, process, communicate, store and retrieve information.
Today, the firm claims to be the world’s largest IT and consulting services company and operates in more than 170 countries worldwide.
IBM was established in the UK in 1951. Its clients now include sole proprietorships, government and global organisations.
Most of IBM’s enterprise business is in industries that are broadly grouped into six sectors – financial services, public, industrial, distribution, communications, and small and medium-sized businesses.
During the second quarter of 2009, IBM’s global revenue of $23.3bn was 13% down on the same period in 2008. For the quarter, the company’s gross profit margin stood at 45.5%, up 2.3 points from last year. Meanwhile, its net income stood at $3.1bn, an increase of 12%.
Traditionally, you can't just walk into IBM or Microsoft with resume and expect a call back based on that. Every one I know inside these places references the "internal" referral as the reason they got in, not a random submission of resume. This takes the traditional tape away; "you" dealt with the "magic" connection to the team members first, then HR.
Oracle is the traditional way (again, know this from direct experience with people that work there) where your filter into the ORACLE community is through HR first, not the immediate team needing your services.
Unless you are a contractor, when you are in IBM or MICROSOFT, you’re in. With ORACLE, it’s measuring your performance on an on-going basis. ,
I've seen 2 generations of families, friends knowing friends and unusual relationships active in Microsoft and IBM, but there credentials are all over the place. Meanwhile, Oracle seems focused on what you know & how well you do it, so you have a lot of people with no direct connections other than their credentials working there.
Internal connections get people in and they are exposed to rich programs to wear a hat in multiple departments. You can go in for sales at MSN and be a systems analyst coming out. But at oracle you go in as a programmer, your title carries programmer for the lifetime you are there even if you get to management level.
I can’t say Top Management globally affects the employee retention, it’s the acquisition practiced; either you’re married into the company or acquired. From experience, MICROSOFT and IBM makes you part of the family through connections, ORACLE qualifies you to be part of theirs. The corporate need vs desire directly affects your
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