IBM’s Global Talent Management Strategy
MAN 2300
Professor Gladys Wills
M-W 5:40 – 6:55
Group 3
Dominique Llopiz, Jason Williams. Sarah Etheart
Elda Murillo. Lianne Gonzalez
Abstract
An increasing awareness was that with global changes in the labor force, HR Professionals are
being requested to do more with less, to do diverse work and to do it better, which puts them
under greater burden to redefine their roles and reexamine their structure. The HR function
should not be fixated only on the workplace but also the marketplace and connected straight to
the main business strategy. In order to accomplish this, the HR department ought to be an
combined unit within the business and therefore centralized. A Central HR department
restructures all the roles of the department within a complex system. The vital aspect of this style
of human resources management is the centralized location of all the individuals within the
human resources department. The article will present the development and technologies
companies use to better assist and operate the Human Resources Management Centralization.
IBM was originally founded in 1911 by Charles Flint. At the time it was The Computing-
Tabulating-Recording Company, which was the precursor to IBM – a merger of three
manufacturing businesses. In 1914 he hired Thomas Watson Sr. who took the company to a
whole other level. In 1924 he renamed C-T-R with International Business Machines, which we
know today as IBM. He dedicated another 28 years of making the business successful and then
he turned it over to his son Thomas Watson Jr.
Going forward, IBM was revolutionary with their innovations and dominance in the
computer industry; despite the fact that not all innovations were successful. In the 1980s, IBM
was doing exceptionally well, far beyond what anyone had planned for the company. During the
following decade, their financial performance quickly plummeted from $6 billion to negative
$2.8 billion. From that point IBM was branded with being behind in technology and out of touch
with customer needs. They needed to do something and fast to come out of that. Unfortunately,
that led to hundreds of employee layoffs and cutting costs. IBM was able to make a comeback
from the upcoming Internet and their improved spending habits.
Sam Palmisano was in charge of IBMs integrated global services for three years. In 2000,
he went from president and COO to CEO in 2002. In the following years IBM became a strong
company once again, had acquired a consulting firm, and became a global innovator in services.
Those running IBM realized that their most reliable clients were enterprises. They needed 70%
of their revenues to be made outside of the United States of America by 2009; they were already
at 57% on 2003, making it a reasonable goal.
After the realization of where the company needed to be to prosper, Palmisano and Randy
MacDonald, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, discussed strategies on the evolution of
global markets. Many other supply chains were going global and cut across organizational
boundaries. Palmisano wanted a “Globally Integrated Enterprise” (GIE) that would shift the
focus from products to production. As Palmisano stated in the Foreign Affairs article in 2006, the
GIE would be, “…the integration of production and value delivery worldwide. State borders
define less and less the boundaries of corporate thinking or practice.”
Ideally, what IBM desired was to acquire human capital and talent on a global scale. Then
the rest such as knowing a customer’s business and providing value in regards to their needs
would all fall into place. The realized their workforce needed to be redefined at large. There was
a lack of transparency between the corporate headquarters, full-time employees in local regions,
and the contractors hired. What they wanted to create was a system to forecast the future talent
demand and then employees would make personal investments to prepare themselves for the
opportunities available globally. Although this project was going to be very costly to the
company, they knew they would be able to fill the gaps within their talent pool, before seeking
contractors, and it will pay for itself.
That’s when human resources was tasked to be in direct charge of creating the company’s
business strategy, which was the Workforce Management Initiative (WMI). They did not have to
perform certain tasks such as assisting with talent implications of strategy. Their role went deeper
than just performing and executing the company’s mission. They expected this project to take 5-7
years to fully develop and take off. In the business world we all know that time is money. A big
question was, “How can you find time to develop when things are so busy?” The answer was a
comprehensive hands-on approach where HR was mainly responsible for creating the governing
structure around describing work and capabilities and that’s it.
The main idea was to create “a workplace that would operate more like a continuously
adapting supply system.” One of the most important focuses of doing so is creating a common
language. There are hundreds of job titles within the business world; many of which are almost
the same but differ in title due to the field or organization itself. Business leaders and the subject
matter experts were tasked with defining job roles; after all, they are doing the hands on work
and know what is required of them. In the beginning they had 650 roles and three years down the
line there were less than 300. Almost half of the job titles were now obsolete and some duties
were combined under other job titles. The system was comprehensive, transparent, and cost-
effective; it says a lot about efficiency. One of the most gratifying aspects of the WMI for
employees was their access to development especially within a certain time frame to be qualified
for a specific job by offering on- and off-site trainings. That’s a huge benefit for employees
