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How IBM uses workforce science, analytics and collaboration tools to build its Smarter Workforce.

Engaging employees to drive the business

Engaging Employees to Drive the Business

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ContentsThe IBM Smarter Workforce Story 3

Talent 4Big Insights from Big Data 5Talent Acquisition 6Predictive Retention 7

Work 8The IBM Workforce 9Social, Data and Cloud 10Cloud Flexibility and Cost Efficiency 11Expertise at IBM 12

Culture 13Social Business: Unlocking Innovation 14In a Social World 15Think Academy 16Workforce “Jams” 17Global Engagements 18

Conclusion 19


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IBM recognized, in this age of the empowered individual, the need to transform the way we work. We also recognized that our most important asset—our people—had to be at the center of that change.

Drawing upon our depth and breadth of knowledge and experience in workforce science, analytics, social collaboration tools and digital technologies, we developed what we call Smarter Workforce. It puts our employees at the center of our business; engaging them to help our clients drive change, fuel innovation, create business value and sustain competitive advantage. We focused on three dimensions:

Talent We want the best talent…and we get it. Based on workforce science, our talent suite enables us to understand what is unique about people and build the hiring, development and retention mechanisms to make them successful.

Work We provide our employees the technologies to connect to customers, partners and each other, across the network. We can identify gaps and opportunities, predict trends and take action whenever and wherever needed.

Culture By cultivating an engaging work environment, IBM can directly connect actions to business strategy, which has led to increased efficiency, productivity and agility.

By viewing these three core employee-focused components not as separate but as interdependent, IBM is able to attract, engage and develop an innovative and customer-focused workforce that will continue to rapidly adapt to changing business conditions.

The IBM Smarter Workforce Story


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TalentWe use workforce science and analytics to attract, engage, develop and retain our best fit talent, and help them do meaningful work.


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Insight into human behavior is greater than it has ever been. We know what makes people good at what they do, and we understand the dynamics of talent and the science of human behavior. Analytics transform the way people decisions are made.

Using workforce science and analytics, IBM matches capabilities to business needs to attract, engage, develop and retain “best fit” individuals for our high-value roles.

Insights gained from data and analytics equip our managers to answer some tough questions:

• What is the propensity for top performers to leave the business?

• What are the most effective recruitment techniques?

• Do higher employee engagement scores drive sales?

• What’s the difference between good vs. great performance?

• How do we improve the quality of hires?

• What are the key indicators of employee turnover?

• How can we improve succession planning throughout the ranks?

Big Insights from Big Data


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Figure 3. New2Blue Community.

At IBM, successful talent acquisition is defined by attracting the right candidates to the right roles through precision and science, and using social tools to make them more productive more quickly. Our globally integrated recruitment strategy begins with communicating the “why IBM” value proposition across IBM’s career website, external job sites and social media.

Talent Acquisition

IBM developed and deployed a toolkit that provides hiring teams with globally consistent messaging, creative guidance, templates and imagery. Our strategy centers on directing traffic to our career site, which not only provides job listings but also educates candidates about working for IBM. IBM recognized that attrition is highest in the first 90 days after hire. Creation of a social community called

Figure 1. IBM career website.

New2Blue paves the way for new IBM employees to quickly connect with colleagues, find experts and access all the resources they need to perform their jobs. With the New2Blue community, our first-month attrition rate plunged from the mid-teens to single digits. We realized tremendous cost savings in the form of turnover avoidance and faster productivity and time to value.

Figure 2. Soon2Blue Community.


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We know that retaining our top talent is critical not only to maintaining a competitive advantage, but to reducing turnover cost as well. IBM’s multi-faceted analysis uses survey technology and analytics to impact retention practices.

Predictive Retention

Discuss options to put analytics into steady state production use and create a retention plan across the workforce.

Identify the factors that led to attrition by surveying exiting employees on an ongoing basis to enable immediate action and insight.

Employ retention analytics to identifythe characteristics and profiles of employees who are likely to voluntarily leave in order to predict future attrition.

Executive summary of analyses enablesaction on the specific risk factors to prevent future attrition, and provides insight into ROI and impact to business/key positions.

Operationalize Survey

AnalyzeAct


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We get work done by connecting employees, customers and partners to enable a collaborative work experience that is in-context, powered by analytics and delivered anytime, anywhere.

Work


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430Kemployees

35%work

remotely

40Knew hires

a year

100+acquisitions50%

<5 yearsof service

170countries

• 430,000 geographically diverse employees

• New hire, remote and new acquisition employees are a large part of the workforce

• All employees are connected through IBM’s social and collaboration tools

• Connected employees are engaged, and are collaborating to drive innovation, create value for customers and move the business forward

The IBM Workforce


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The way we work is rapidly changing. Mobile access to information is increasingly pervasive, while cloud applications are delivering on-demand flexibility not possible with traditional on-premise systems.

Big data and analytics are driving workforce insights and enabling informed, data-driven decisions on everything from recruitment to talent development and workforce planning.

IBM has not only embraced the concept of the rapidly changing work environment, but has also redefined it in Smarter Workforce.

Smarter Workforce:• drives people-centric engagement for productivity

and brand value

• exploits data as the new basis of competitive advantage

• uses cloud as a business growth engine

Social, Data and Cloud


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The transformation of IBM Human Resources Before After

870%4001600

1500%

HR operation centers

Staff involved in HR delivery who are located in operation centers

HR applications

%

IBM chose to deploy in the cloud for greater IT and business flexibility. This allowed us to turn our HR system into not just a system of record, but a system of engagement that enhances anywhere, anytime access for high-level employee performance.

Figure 4. Cloud systems have played a key role in the rationalization of IBM HR systems and processes.

Cloud Flexibility and Cost Efficiency

Ease of deployment and lower cost also factored into cloud HR systems implementation. These systems can be deployed in 20 to 30 percent less time and cost than traditional systems, with lower ongoing maintenance expenses. A transition towards cloud-based HR has been an important element in enabling us to reduce the number of HR applications and operations centers.


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Faster response to client needs for expert insight truly sets IBM apart from the competition and helped drive the creation of Expertise. Expertise is a discovery tool that allows IBMers to quickly find colleagues who can provide the insight needed to do their jobs.

IBM Expertise is based on the belief that, in a social world, what you share is as important as what you know, and that we can infer IBMers’ expertise through social and analytics.

The tool mines and analyzes data from the many places where IBMers get their work done. IBM Expertise provides a single profile and digital representation of an IBMer’s expertise, based on information from existing data sources. It is enriched by what IBMers are known for, the experiences they’ve had, the networks they’re connected to and the content they author or represent.

Expertise at IBM

Accessible in multiple formats

Easy to use

Increases efficiency

Various data sources

Comprehensive keyword filter


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We nurture an engaging environment and culture built on trust, transparency and responsiveness, informed by analytics and grounded in a common vision of success.

Culture


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Social Business: Unlocking Innovation

The new paradigm of the social business is at the center of IBM’s transformation. With a variety of programs and tools such as IBM Connections, the social platform used by more than 300,000 IBMers, IBM has opened the door to new collaboration and innovation across the workforce. People are now sharing original content and experiences, leveraging advice and learning from others, and cultivating dynamic virtual communities, at scale and without boundaries.

These social interactions enable people to rapidly learn, act with greater confidence and influence others in entirely new ways. This mobilization of collective intelligence ultimately positions IBM to deliver more customer-focused products and services and improve our agility in anticipating and reacting to client needs. In a social business environment, IBM has been able to:

• Build distinct expertise by making it easy for people to learn, locate experts and access relevant information based on the collective knowledge of specialized communities.

• Foster stronger relationships by creating a more analytics-driven environment personalized at every touch point to optimize decision-making and motivate action.

• Optimize workforce talent by reinventing how we recruit, motivate and retain the best talent using workforce science, analytics and comparative benchmarks.

The social business at scale

300,000 active IBMers on our

Connections social platform

200,000 social communities at IBM

30,000 IBMers in client

collaboration hubs


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For a manager, the digital workplace provides quick and integrated access for team building and job administration. Hiring, onboarding, performance and social collaboration capabilities are provided all in one place with an engaging persona-based experience that facilitates ease of use and quick action. At IBM, the digital workplace was the catalyst for such initiatives as social business, ExpertiseLocator, Think Academy, workforce “jams” and the Corporate Service Corps.

“In a social world, what’s more important is not necessarily just what you know, it’s what you share. You’ve got to keep that front and center.”

— Ginni Rometty, IBM CEO


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Think Academy is a new approach to fostering a learning movement for IBMers. This education program leverages rich content to inspire conversations and creativity on strategic topics like cloud computing, analytics, social business, mobile and more.

The first Friday of every month is Think Friday, with CEO Ginni Rometty and other IBM senior executives and clients delivering a series of sessions, videos and interviews to dive deeper into the IBM point of view. The Think Academy site, accessible from any device, anywhere, serves as a resource for all 400,000+ IBMers. Dedicated tracks tailor content to client-facing and technical IBMers, with direct linkage to strategic assets and IBM experts.

Think Academy

“Every IBMer, I don’t care what their job is, goes through this.”

- Ginni Rometty, IBM CEO


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At IBM we engage our people through what we call “jams” and social media. A jam is a large-scale, 72-hour event that invites all employees to participate and comment on a topic. These popular events first debuted more than a decade ago, when we used “values jams” to enhance our three values—dedication to every client’s success, innovation that matters and trust and personal responsibility—to be more contemporary and driven to our future.

In 2013, participation in the Client Experience Jam reached record levels of engagement with over 248,000 IBMers participating from 150 countries.

Workforce “Jams”

2013 Client Experience Jam Participation

248,000+IBMers

14CxOs

150countries

98hours

brainstorming 8.5

millionpage views

24,000threads

published

127,856posts

Defining the behaviors that make us IBM


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IBM’s Corporate Service Corps sends some of IBM’s most talented employees to provide pro bono counsel to countries in the developing world that are grappling with issues that intersect business, technology and society. Bringing skills in technology, scientific research, marketing, finance, HR and law, they work with local governments, non-profit civic groups and small business on such issues as economic development, energy, transportation, education and healthcare.

Since its inception in 2008, IBM has dispatched more than 2,400 IBM employees from 50 countries on more than 187 engagements in 34 countries, where they have completed more than 850 team assignments.

By giving employees an opportunity to hone their professional skills, the program produces more loyal employees and future IBM leaders who are more collaborative and culturally literate.

Global Engagements

“If only 100 of Fortune 500 companies sent 500 of their top talent on such assignments, we could collectively deploy 50,000 of the most talented leaders around the world to solve some of the most difficult problems facing society and, in the process, create remarkable goodwill.”

— Stanley S. Litow, VP, Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs and President, IBM International Foundation

What we have accomplished

An IBM team helped the Cross River province of Nigeria design a program to provide financial, healthcare and literacy assistance to poor women and children.

IBM’s advice enabled a network of dozens of children’s hospitals and youth centers in Brazil to become more efficient.

A financial services agency in South Africa is now making consumer loans with better repayment rates, thanks to IBM advice.


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ConclusionSmarter Workforce allows us to look at work through a new lens. It’s a unique approach that puts our employees at the center of the business. We discovered that engaged employees help drive change, fuel innovation, create business value and give us a sustainable competitive advantage. They are also more likely to drive deeper relationships with our clients, which in turn drive business outcomes.

Further, the same unique value—analytics, workforce science, work experience, social collaboration, breadth of portfolio and depth of experience—that we have captured for ourselves, can be brought to our clients in the Smarter Workforce solution. As we’ve done for ourselves, we can help organizations embrace Smarter Workforce by:

• Designing the right workforce—attracting and developing the right talent

• Instilling the right culture

• Getting work done in new ways to speed value creation with networks spanning employees, clients and partners

Engaging Employees to Drive the Business...that’s what Smarter Workforce is all about.


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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2014

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Produced in the United States of America August 2014 All Rights Reserved

IBM, the IBM logo and ibm.com are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

References in this publication to IBM products and services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates.

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