Reference no: EM133519795

Case Study: You are the lead consultant for Human Ecology and Workforce Management Solutions, LLC. Its top HR person has asked you to review the following development and answer the following questions with top management:

Some employees in IBM's Global Technology Services group received e-mails from the company informing them that a recent evaluation had identified them as the employees who had not kept pace with acquiring the necessary skills and expertise needed to meet changing client needs, technology, and markets. As a result, IBM requires them to dedicate one day a week or up to twenty-three days in total between October 2014 and March 2015 to focus on training. During this time, the employees will take a pay cut, receiving only 90% of their base salary. Once the training is completed, salaries will be restored to full. Employees can either take the training or look for job opportunities within IBM that better match their current skill set.

The employees have reacted negatively toward the program. Some feel the program with its pay cut is unfair because their work has received positive evaluations from their managers. Also, employees noted that all the employees in the workgroup were being assigned to the same training program regardless of their individual skill levels. A few of the employees believe that the training program is a cost-cutting exercise that is being presented as a training program. A spokesperson for IBM emphasized that the salary cut and retraining program was not a standard practice across IBM but affected only a few hundred employees in the US technology services outsourcing business. The purpose of the program is to help employees develop key skills in areas such as cloud and mobile computing and advanced data analytics. Because the program can help employees in the long term to increase their billable hours with clients, IBM believes the salary cut is a co-investment cost shared by both the employees and the company. IBM calculated that it will lose one day of billing each week that the employees are in the training program, which in turn matches 20% of the compensation of the employees involved. So, the 10% pay cut actually splits the cost of training.

Question 1. Introduction

Question 2. Analyze whether the IBM undertaking is "strategic." very important to give detailed explanation

Question 3. Evaluate whether the employees' salaries should be reduced for the time they attend training programs.very important to give detailed explanation

Question 4. Evaluate recommendations for additional ways through which the IBM management can convince the affected employees to update and gain new skills.very important to give detailed explanation

Question 5. Summarize IBMs choices and the effects it will have on the organization.very important to give detailed explanation