Slashdot Mirror
IBM: Remote Working Is Great! (For Everyone Except Us) (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: IBM, the company that just weeks ago said it was doing away with its work-from-home policy, is now preaching the benefits of telecommuting to customers. Big Blue's Smarter Workforce Group says a recent panel it hosted at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) conference concluded that customers who work remotely are "more engaged, have stronger trust in leadership and much stronger intention to stay. These findings mirror what an IBM Smarter Workforce Institute study found," the group wrote. "Challenging the modern myths of remote working shares employee research revealing that remote workers are highly engaged, more likely to consider their workplaces as innovative, happier about their job prospects and less stressed than their more traditional, office-bound colleagues." This is posted without any apparent sense of irony, as IBM said just weeks ago that remote workers were not part of its "recipe for success" and could no longer be permitted to work anywhere other than its six regional offices in various techie hubs around the US.
I never had trouble finding a job as a programmer until I started looking for remote work.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It's not exactly the first time this type of thing has been done. It's a page out of the HR version of Sun Tzu's The Art of War.
PetroCanada, for instance, bounced its offices back and forth between Toronto and Calgary a few times (back in the 80s or 90s). Lots of people tried to hang on and lost their shirts on moving expenses because the housing markets happened to be going the opposite way of the moves.
Companies will sometimes hire an 'axe man' who gives them advice on the best way to get employees to leave for the least possible expense to the corporation. Forcing them to choose between moving and quitting is not uncommon.