back to article Q: How many IBMers need to volunteer for corporate guillotine?

IBM UK is looking to chop the Technical Services Support team within the Global Technology Services division by up to 10 per cent, according to company insiders. An Employee Consultation Committee, comprised of management and employees elected by their peers to act as workforce reps, was formed last month as the latest expense …

  1. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    No sign yet...

    No sign yet of reducing the rediculous amount of middle to executive layers of upper management fat to cut costs then? No??? Oh... so going to get rid of your front line staff instead? That's really smart IBM. That must have taken some REAL thinking!!!!

    1. MyffyW Silver badge

      Re: No sign yet...

      IBM - and GTS specifically - were never any good at serving the needs of the $10bn-a-year behemoth I worked for seeing that as "not large enough to achieve economies of scale" or some such guff. The Karma Police will get you, just a shame regular folk are losing there jobs in the process.

    2. Mark 85

      Re: No sign yet...

      Right...get rid of the troops in the trenches and keep the officer corps because... the company needs the leadership not the people actually doing things.

      Obligatory: rowing

  2. Dan 55 Silver badge

    I guess they'll be working from home a lot, then

    A voluntary redundancy scheme was more recently opened giving anyone that wants to leave the organisation with a statutory minimum pay-off the option to do so.

    That's the only way I can see this working out for someone ("work from home", interviews, accept a job offer, accept voluntary redundancy).

    Doesn't seem a very clever to reduce headcount.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Headmaster

      Re: I guess they'll be working from home a lot, then

      That should read "a very clever way to reduce headcount".

      I'll go and stand in the corner.

  3. jmch Silver badge

    No incentive to leave voluntarily?

    "A voluntary redundancy scheme was more recently opened giving anyone that wants to leave the organisation with a statutory minimum pay-off the option to do so."

    If "statutory minimum" means what I think it does, ie anyone getting fired also gets that same payoff, what's the incentive to leave voluntarily??

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No incentive to leave voluntarily?

      If "statutory minimum" means what I think it does, ie anyone getting fired also gets that same payoff, what's the incentive to leave voluntarily??

      Just getting away from the cr@p is quite an incentive....

      Anon for obvious reasons

    2. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

      Re: No incentive to leave voluntarily?

      .. there is no real incentive, apart from it perhaps looking a little better on your CV? As it's stat min though, folks might as well tough it out, and get an extra months salary before they get IVRd, money is money after all.

      Also, it's 47 bodies this time, but the axe will come out again soon enough. I left under VR two years ago, and there have been a couple of swings of said axe between then and now. It never ends.

    3. tfewster
      Facepalm

      Re: No incentive to leave voluntarily?

      It means that 47 of IBMs best staff, who were going to leave anyway, can now get paid to do so. Their team leaders, who recognise their value, won't be allowed to stop them as middle manglement have cuts targets to meet.

  4. Jonathan 27

    IBM is squeezing remote workers to come back into one of a number of "colocation hubs"

    Of course they are, all studies on the matter point to the idea that remote work is less productive than working from a centralized location. The trade-offs made in communication being the main problem. Why pay people the same for less work? It's not like they pay you for your commute.

    1. Blotto Silver badge

      @Jonathan

      That's not why they are stopping remote working. They are intentionally making things uncomfortable for their staff so they leave. Nothing to do with increasing productivity.

      It should be we'll known by now that the less productive the support service the more it earns as the customer ends up paying more for the same or less. For example, dedicated experienced staff borged to outsourcer, promote away or sack experienced guy and put in certified but clueless to that specific customer replacement, suddenly that 5 minute job takes all day and may require a product specialist to complete. That extra time and skill requires additional charges at the customers cost. This example happens all over outsourced environments, PFI anyone?

      Seems IBM are determined to win the race for the bottom closely followed by HP(E?) & CSC, I think serco and crapita have beaten them to it though.

      If you want an IT job doing right make sure you have the inhouse skills to do it or at least to understand what's required of a 3rd party, & no Project Managers don't count.

      1. Stephen McLaughlin

        Abosultely Correct

        "That's not why they are stopping remote working. They are intentionally making things uncomfortable for their staff so they leave. Nothing to do with increasing productivity."

        This is a way to reduce staff without having to announce layoffs. The problem with this method, is the workers that can find something else and not have to relocate will do so, and the personnel that are unable to find another employment opportunity will relocate. So overall, they will lose the more employable staff and retain more of the less-employable ones.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Project Managers do^H^Hcan't count.

        FTFY.

    2. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

      @Jonothan. Can you provide a link to one of these studies please? Because I worked from home for the best part of a decade, and didn't breach any SLAs, all our work got done, and we all all worked from home, in fact, we were quite thorough, and the methodologies and procedures we developed contributed towards IBM getting ISO 9001 accreditation. Our offshored counterparts sharing an office were not so thorough.

      Now I work in an office, time is lost with people 'communicating' about football and personal crises.

  5. Nolveys
    Mushroom

    Autumnal Cannibalism...

    ...first it was art, now it's business strategy*.

    * I started typing tragedy instead of strategy by mistake...twice.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I assume they want remote workers to move to company offices so that they can train their replacements.

    1. Korev Silver badge

      They want their staff to move to an office where they are colocated because it's more efficient and also move staff offshore because having your staff colocated is more efficient. I think I've cleared that up for everyone...

    2. Mark 85

      There's probably "control" issues as well... kind of hard to beat someone up who's working from home with fresh hot beverages, creature comforts and not in the day-to-day BS that often goes on.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Like HP, one doubts that IBM will show any signs of life until they get rid of their hapless CEO.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      A change of CEO isn't likely to make any difference; they've pretty much been clones for decades. Come to that, just about everyone above middle management seems cut from the same mould (if they're not, they either don't get there in the first place, or don't last very long). Just sell off of the family silver, do anything you can think of to keep the share price up, and then hand over the reins once you've accumulated share options. Employees? A mere necessary evil in keeping the company technically afloat. Frankly, the company has been moribund for a decade or longer; it's hard to see how anything short of a root-and-branch purge could make any difference.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Incentives

        The incentives are all for that: share price, and short/medium term. If you invest or take chances, it is bad for you... So why do it.. For the company? No, you will be sacked when on of your projects fails...so it is way better to work for yourself, and not the company...

  8. earl grey
    Facepalm

    It's the stop and the end

    So, does it matter if they shove them off the roof or force them to jump?

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