IBM is Telling Remote Workers To Get Back in the Office Or Leave (wsj.com)

For the last few years, IBM has built up a remote work program for its 380,000 employees. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that IBM is "quietly dismantling" this option, and has told its employees this week that they either need to work in the office or leave the company (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). From the report: IBM is giving thousands of its remote workers in the U.S. a choice this week: Abandon your home workspaces and relocate to a regional office -- or leave the company. The 105-year-old technology giant is quietly dismantling its popular decades-old remote work program to bring employees back into offices, a move it says will improve collaboration and accelerate the pace of work. The changes comes as IBM copes with 20 consecutive quarters of falling revenue and rising shareholder ire over Chief Executive Ginni Rometty's pay package. The company won't say how many of its 380,000 employees are affected by the policy change, which so far has been rolled out to its Watson division, software development, digital marketing, and design -- divisions that employ tens of thousands of workers. The shift is particularly surprising since the Armonk, N.Y., company has been among the business world's staunchest boosters of remote work, both for itself and its customers. IBM markets software and services for what it calls "the anytime, anywhere workforce," and its researchers have published numerous studies on the merits of remote work.

Comments

Office space

[petes_PoV]

When I worked for IBM in the early 90s, we were often required to work from home as the company simply did not have enough desks and facilities to provide for all its staff. After that came a project to "hot desk" people, but that was unpopular and did not achieve any real savings or benefits.

I presume that they have since realised that there are, in fact, real benefits to having a full team in a single location. And now that they have sacked so many staff, they now have the free space to actually implement the most sensible and efficient (for the company, not the employees) way of getting the most out of their people.

Re: Telecommuting by another name.

[nitehawk214]

This is merely a soft layoff. Force people to quit by making their jobs insufferable. I'm sure they figure the older, more highly paid, employees will go first.

Re:Big Company Moves

[Kjella]

Expect the policy to continue until they start to hurt from the lack of experienced people to execute the little actual work that gets done in the corporation.

I suspect that if they don't see the value of teleworkers they'll hurt a lot faster from the "invisible" work that just went missing. I mean you have your written duties, the big stuff that they mostly know about.. but then you have all those little things where something this is wrong/missing/not updated and eventually it turns out Bob used to do that but Bob's not around anymore.

Re:Doesn't make money sense

[Sydin]

It's not just a stealth layoff, it's stealth ageism. I'd wager that much of IBM's older, higher salaried workforce is participating in the remote program, while the workers who are already in the urban centers around the offices or are willing to uproot their lives to move to one are younger and cheaper.

Re:Doesn't make money sense

[David_Hart]

As an older worker, I'm extremely offended that you would assume I'm unwilling to comply with job requirements and move if necessary to retain a job I am good at and I love. That is extremely discriminatory.

It's not specifically age related. Age is being used as a catchall for people in the age range where they have a family and kids. If your kids are in a good school with lots of friends in a nice community are you going to move or look for another job?

Working in the nearest city may require uprooting the whole family and moving to an area with higher housing prices, etc. People have done it. Most prefer not to if they can help it, at least until the kids are old enough to be in college, etc.

Incompetent overpaid CEO is incompetent news at 11

[LeftCoastThinker]

Nothing to see here, just more of the same.

It is far past time to pass a law that limits CEOs pay to 10x the average pay of their employees in cash and the rest in company stocks that can only be sold 10% per year, requiring CEOs to focus on the long term health and viability of their company, not just short term gains...