From the water cooler to the classroom
Bob Lee, a technical marketing professional at IBM, has made countless presentations to senior executives about complicated subjects. Next year, he may be facing his toughest audience yet: a class of junior high math students. After 31 years with IBM, Bob has joined the new Transition to Teaching program, and along with 100 employees is "cramming" for his second career.
Jobs requiring science, math, engineering and technical training will increase 51 percent between 1998 and 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. To prepare students to qualify for jobs in an innovation-driven economy, over 260,000 new math and science teachers are needed. IBM has a history of championing K-12 public education worldwide, and a pool of experienced employees skilled in math and sciences who have expressed interest in pursuing second, even third careers after retiring. Transition to Teaching helps these IBMers move onto a teaching career with $15,000 in financial support for accreditation courses and a stipend during their leave-of-absence for student teaching.
Transition to Teaching is one of several initiatives IBM has underway to manage its talented workforce within the idiosyncratic demographics of this century. IBM is unique in size and diversity with 330,000 employees in 75 countries. How do we optimize our most valuable asset-our people-so that the right skills are available in the right place and time? Here are some of the ways IBM is helping itself and its clients.
Deep blue skills for the next generation
In the mainframe business, it takes about eight years on the job to build skills as a developer. As mainframe engineers, developers, technicians become eligible for retirement over the next decade, IBM is piloting ways to transfer these deep skills to the incoming generation. The first step was a diagnostic study that helped pinpoint exactly where and when the skills gaps would occur over the next few years. "There is no silver bullet. IBM and most other companies will need to have multiple strategies to close skills gaps...such as flexible work options to extend mature workers' careers, coupled with workforce management tools, knowledge management and innovative learning initiatives," says Edward Vitalos, associate partner, maturing workforce, IBM Global Business Services.
"In the mainframe development area, we are planning to implement an apprentice program to partner a retiree with two or three engineers to teach them specific skills," explains Jennifer Howland, director, technical workforce planning. To shrink eight years of training into a more manageable timeframe, learning experts will be developing targeted modules, using the newest technologies, to create compelling learning experiences that can supplement the traditional classroom setting. Other options include recruiting retirees to become available for on demand training, or high-end technical projects.
Creating a supply chain of talent
IBM, its partners and its customers will need mainframe specialists to develop applications and support the systems for the foreseeable future. To ensure it gets its share of ever smaller classes of technology graduates, IBM has undertaken an academic initiative with 230 universities worldwide. This includes developing courses in mainframe technology, training professors, offering access to computing facilities and recruiting students. The goal is to train 20,000 mainframe students by 2010. (The need for talent in the services businesses is just as important, however. In January, IBM and North Carolina State University announced a new curriculum initiative in Services Sciences, Management and Engineering. The new academic initiative is designed to prepare graduate students for careers in the evolving multidisciplinary field of services management.)
Through a concerted effort of communications and outreach, IBM is encouraging an increasing number of retirees to take advantage of flexible work options, including job sharing, flexible locations, project-based and part-time assignments. "A challenge is overcoming the perception that part-time work means stepping off the career track. It doesn't," explains Judy Gaynor, IBM talent program manager. One manager of two senior software engineers points out that the part-time option has allowed him to retain two top contributors, one of whom has received several patent awards since becoming a part-timer.
We're using our experience to help clients
- Late last year, IBM conducted a series of "salons" focused on workforce aging to foster awareness of the issue and its implication for employers and society.
- For a large urban school district and other public and private sector clients, IBM is delivering a series of one-day "Mature Workforce" seminars for decision makers. It is designed to quickly get employer leaders up to speed on the issue providing them with baseline knowledge including demographics, trends and impacts and good practice strategies and actions.
- IBM has combined its expertise in workforce analytics and forecasting, human capital management and a broad spectrum of technologies to produce a Maturing Workforce Diagnostic. It enables clients to project and understand aging's impact on their workforce and to take action to manage it. In one instance, consultants were able to evaluate and distill the workforce aging problem down to a population of less than 200 out of 3,000 workers, greatly reducing the cost and complexity of managing it.
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