Re: Consultation?
Agree, IBM should be more forthright about the process instead of letting HR slap all of their corporate PC labels on everything... it doesn't make the process of firing people to hit arbitrary numbers better for anyone.
Even if IBM doesn't care about the people they are letting go, they should have a respectful process for the people who they want to keep around. If everyone else sees people being screwed over, even if it isn't them, they are probably also going to look for the exits. I am writing as though this is a hypothetical, but the brain drain has already happened at IBM. If you are really a super star, world class (engineer, salesperson, etc), why work in that environment if you have a bevy of other options. If they just said, "look we need to let x number of people go" six months ahead of time (and they definitely know it is going to happen six months ahead of time) and asked people to look for other jobs while continuing to work at IBM, I think most people would respect it. What people resent is having it sprung on them out of the blue and they being labeled as damaged goods on the market when they could have fairly easily gotten another job if IBM had given them some warning. It is just the decent thing to do and it really costs IBM very little to nothing. It also send a signal to other employees that, if the worst happens, they will be treated fairly instead of just getting bounced one day.