IBM, Bangalore:  Team Waiting For Promised Money
By Venu Gopal Rao

Corporations worldwide understand that there is a constant need to devise high productivity, high quality, cost effective solutions to sustain business profits. One such initiative being driven by IBM Corporation is the Right to Left Strategy in one of its Delivery Centers in Bangalore. The objective is to move work from high end resolver teams towards the helpdesk to ensure quicker resolution of end user issues and increased customer satisfaction. Critically, the savings are derived out of doing a 3rd level job by 2nd level personnel, so savings in terms of billing for the same work. More so, this gives the people working on 1st level a definitive career progression path and a potential salary raise around 15 to 20 percent. So, it is a win-win strategy - for people and organisation.

This initiative has been driven since mid of 2006 and according to inside sources the dollar savings show the team is doing a good job. An article has even been published on IBM worldwide intranet to the same affect. So, we could safely assume everyone around is happy, right? Wrong!

Ever since the inception of this function/team driving R to L strategy, there have been people who have been working on the role for over six to seven months and they have not received their revised salaries or the their letters of appointment. More so, there seems to be no hope or answers from the respective managers on the reasons for this potential delay.  Employees have been told that the papers reflecting change in band (level) would be coming soon. Disappointingly, the dates reflecting the appointment will be April, 2007. If this wasn’t unfair enough,  the employees have now learnt that there will be no arrears to be paid for the months they have delivered on job.  According to office goss the question being hotly discussed by the people on this initiative is:  where did all their effort go? How would they be compensated for the time spent on the job without papers and compensation but hollow assurances?

IBM as an organisation is a pioneer in the industry - the innovators innovator. It stands today with over a fifty thousand employee strength in India and growing.  According to insiders, many believe that an organisation of IBMs stature has HR systems to identify issues which affect employee morale and organizational climate.  The IBM staff hopes corrective actions are taken ASAP. These may be delayed, hopefully not too late.