IBM to reduce workforce by 300000?
By Sandhya

Technology giant IBM had revenues of $95.8 Billion in year ending 2009.  400,000 IBM employees world wide had generated a net income of $13.4 Billion.  Despite a global recession, IBM management kept a steady ship with more jobs being moved to IBM India. A senior US-based IBM manager feels that within seven years IBM could manage its work with only 100,000 employees.

India is one of the jewels of IBM international.  IBM re-entered India in 1992 after its walk out in the 1970s. Headquartered in Bangalore, IBM has offices in 14 Indian cities.  IBM took over Daksh eServices to establish a huge BPO footprint in India and Philippines

While India has been a big winner when USA and Europe were outsourcing in the last 15 years, the fact is such good times will not last forever. In a flat world, we will face increasing competition from other countries.

The IBM Global Business Services Consulting Division manages a niche section Human Capital Management  (HCM) which helps IBM clients ‘develop a winning workforce to generate real business outcomes’.  Essentially, HCM uses a mixture of hardware, software and processes to ensure that their clients can manage with fewer full time employees.

The Human Capital Management Section is headed by IBM VP and ‘Global Leader’ Tim Ringo.  Before joining IBM, Tim was a partner at Accenture Education.

Tim Ringo recently told HR magazine Personnel Today that IBM may be in a position to reduce its workforce of 400K to about 100K

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IT giant IBM told Personnel Today that the firm's global workforce of 399,000 permanent employees could reduce to 100,000 by 2017, the date by which the firm is due to complete its HR transformation programme.

Tim Ringo, head of IBM Human Capital Management, the consultancy arm of the IT conglomerate, said the firm would re-hire the workers as contractors for specific projects as and when necessary, a concept dubbed 'crowd sourcing'.
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While Tim may have impressed the HR managers who read the magazine, not surprisingly it did not go down too well with IBM employees who were unaware that some managers in their organization had such a plan to increase profits.