In this Section
- The new skills paradigm
- The new leaders
- The new workplace model
The new workplace model: From “work/life balance” to work/life integration.
In today’s fast-changing world, the most skilled and creative professionals expect to take charge of their own integrated lives. To win the “war for talent,” companies must be just as creative and progressive.
Twenty years ago, IBM introduced “flex time,” allowing employees to adjust their office hours by 30 minutes. But the workplace we knew then, or even five years ago, no longer exists.
More than 70 percent of IBM managers now supervise employees who work somewhere else. Nearly half of IBMers work in a location other than a traditional IBM office—including 54,000 who work from home (up by half since 2004). Today, the interactions of a global workforce—with 24/7 activity spanning the world’s time zones and accommodating a range of local holidays—require a far more flexible environment. Flexibility matters just as much to individuals. Our 2007 Global Work/Life Survey confirms that as IBMers’ flexibility increases, their difficulty in balancing work and personal life decreases. And we’ve also learned that flexibility is a key reason people choose to remain at IBM. So we are innovating again. IBMers now have a range of flexible work options, called Flexibility@Work, enabling them to create the lives they want by devising individual work schedules and integrating their professional and personal responsibilities. Our Global Work/Life Fund provides IBMers’ families with resources such as day care, elder care and summer camps. We’re doing more to enable IBMers to find new assignments with fresh challenges. And with many of us no longer seeing each other daily, the online IBM Club encourages activities and events to stay connected with colleagues.
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2007 IBM Corporate Responsibility Report
A new model of global citizenship among individuals, organizations and society at large.