IBM scraps loyal staffer gifts in favour of... a congratulatory social page

Humbug and cant! Couldn't ask for a better example.

"Now we’re re-imagining how to celebrate years of services across the world - incorporating feedback from IBM managers and employees who have asked a new approach to honour IBMer service anniversaries."

And the faithful swarmed eagerly to get that their beloved Communist Leaders ^H^H^H^H^H their beloved Management should taker a new approach.

Gawd almighty, I would have respected them if they had said "we want to celebrate you all as you hit anniversaries, but we want you also to have jobs, so cutting unnecessary expense is important. No more free pens. But if you want to give shout-outs on the intranet, here's a page."

How to motivate your loyal employees!

I left IBM nearly three years ago but if I had stayed I think I would have been up for the 10 year pen later this year. It is only a pen but I would have been seriously pissed off by this. To me the congratulatory page would be a clear "F-Off" from management.

Loyalty at 3 & 5 years???

They have (or had) loyalty schemes for 3 & 5 years?

They must have 1 hell of a turnover of staff.

Where I work it's 20, 30, 40, 50 years...

Bah!

So I imagine that management bonuses have been replaced by "likes" on the individuals' arsebook pages?

Why is everyone laughing?

Very negative coverage...

The social media option was much better than the alternatives proposed by IBM's management team:

- a free resource action for anyone getting near the free pen milestone

- a stick for management to beat you with when you finally die from overwork. If they burnt one end, you could even use the stick for writing. Like a pen. Sort of...

- management delivering a steaming pile of poo to you. Apparently this couldn't be distinguished from existing daily tasks such as outsourcing or using Lotus Notes...

Finally, in a few years when IBM it completes its destroying or outsourcing of anything vaguely IT related to everywhere else and is just a pack of accountants, will it even matter?

Meh

I have the 10 year pens from several years ago. They're nice quality, but too heavy to carry in a jacket. Honestly, if I need a free pen, I can enquire about over 50s' life cover.

This does seem to be part of the Millenial drive to have everything on the company equivalent of Facebook.

At my company it was originally 20, and then every 5 years after that.

The company revised its policy, and we now have awards for 20 and 40 years only. This was enshrined literally days before I was due to claim my 25 year long service award. Oh well, only another 15 years before I get something now.

Crap like this isn't new.

At a now ex-employer that I am rather glad to be rid of, they decided to cut costs & save money by replacing the individualized "Employee of the Month" award desk plaques with a single, generic (no name on it), clear plastic "crystal" statue-like thing reminescent of something dreamed up by a Hollywood douchebag. So instead of getting a nice personalized plaque you could be proud of & display forever, now they just shuffled the same generic award from desk to desk; once it wasn't there anymore you had nothing to show for your efforts.

I had worked there for over a year, 10 & 12 hour days working my ass off, doing what I could to help clean up the utter disaster that was their paper-based "filing system" that amounted to cardboard Banker boxes filled with file folders & a "XXX - XXY" label on the box to give a hint as to it's contents, into a digital set of files (OCR scans of each folder's documents so the PDF's could be stored on the server) & then the paper copies shredded to save the *acres* of space they required. Pick a box, carry the box to the Copy Room, OCR everything in the box (hours of standing & manually feeding sheets through because the copiers didn't have sheet feeders), double checking the scans matched the originals, double check that all the scans were in their proper directories (one per file folder on the server), put the originals back in the box & mark it as Scanned, carry the box to the Manager's office so they could make sure I'd done it correctly, and back to the storage room for another box. Over & over & over again. Box after box after damned box. All in addition to my ACTUAL job duties because the bastards demanded I do *both*.

A *year* of this crap, doing both jobs, helping my coworkers when they needed help with "anything computery", and being pretty much the bloody definition of a "Team Player". But never getting the EotM award. I could see all the votes for me & everyone else on the internal employee nominations page on the corporate intranet, we could see plain as day that I was often at the top of the pack by a wide margin, but the moment Manglement stepped in & announced the winner, it turns out to be the VP's PA. A rather busty young lady with the work ethic of a dead mongoose & the job duties Bill Clinton would be famous for making use thereof.

When my coworkers finally complained & said they would start filing harrassment complaints on my behalf, the Manglement *FINALLY* gave me the EotM award...

They gave it to me on Monday. They fired me on Friday, claiming I "wasn't a team player".

My coworkers were so shocked & angry that a few threatened to leave as well if I wasn't reinstated immediately. There turned out to be a bunch of us leaving that day, certainly more than Manglement had anticipated. Evidently their resident "computer guy & all around helpful bloke" (me) was a bit TOO handy to let go, so said the folks that remained when we got together over drinks later. The "Records Project" that I had (unknowingly) been on (and the ONLY one on it) had not only stalled but hit a wall - Manglement couldn't find the files on the server & had already destroyed the originals. No originals & no digital archive meant they had nothing to show the Internal Revenue Service auditors when they came knocking, so now the company no longer does business in this State.

IBM doing away with personal gifts as awards for years of loyal service? $ExCompany did away with even the HINT of any personal recognition with a generic EotM plaque we weren't even allowed to keep. Funny though how the VP was able to take a month long "Fact Finding Tour" of various tropical islands that year, even though they had to fire an entire department "due to a shrinking economy".

Greedy bastards. Fuck 'em all.

Hahaa - Writing it is downsourced too.

And since it’s about personalised and social experiences, you, other colleagues, friends and family will play a big role in sharing congratulations.

IBM is going the same way as KODAK. Hopefully, the staff can negotiate some good "eff off" payments on their way out.

Maybe disloyalty is their plan all along

All those loyal longtime staff are an expensive burden when the next wave of layoffs happens. Maybe they're trying to piss them off enough that some leave of their own accord. The company would save far more than the cost of a pen.

A company I worked for was sending its management and sales teams...

.... to "team building" exercises in nice resorts, while "too expensive" (and highly skilled) developers were being "let go" to replace them with cheaper code monkeys, many outsourced. Only a few was asked to remain to herd the monkeys, but looking at what was happening, left anyway.

That under a new CEO coming from IBM....

Not surprisingly, that company went bankrupt not much later, as soon as product quality went down the sink, and customer started to send in lawyers suits instead of paid invoices...

The large multinational that bought the ex-large multinational that I started working for back in the dawn of time, shut down the plant I worked in three months before my 25th anniversary. I still believe it was just to avoid spending money on a service award gift for me.

A culture of feedback to cognitive learning that’s more mobile

Er... What the frack does that mean?

And is there learning that isn't cognitive?

Gamification of the workplace!

I seriously doubt anyone who is a new hire at IBM will ever make any of those milestones. But for those who do, there's a totally awesome 25-year badge waiting for you on your IBM social page!

I work for a pretty staid company, so gamification of the workplace hasn't really hit here yet. But I've been reading the articles -- do Millennials really prefer badges and points to monetary awards? It seems to me that things like this would work only in companies like Google, Facebook, etc. that become your entire life. Even when I was younger I could never imagine wanting to work 16-hour days in return for "perks" that keep you there and working.

Although, this is a first for our company...they announced a few months ago that they were "harmonizing" the long service awards across countries...but they were still giving people money (just not as much.) Usually our HR is the ones slavishly copying IBM and GE...seriously, every single management fad that comes out of those places is implemented. I think it's because they have the same white shoe management consulting firm.