IBM Consulting workers told management wants to 'more closely align pay, performance'
- Reference: 1740398323
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/02/24/ibm_consulting/
- Source link:
This is according to an internal communication sent to the Consulting Team - seen by The Register . Big Blue says it "continuously evolves its performance management systems" and as "our priorities and strategy have shifted to remain competitive in the market, it became clear that our performance experience needed to revolve too."
Via an SAP SuccessFactors tool, IBM intends to hold performance reviews just once at the end of each calendar year, and these include "three key dimensions" including business outcomes, skills, and behaviors. Each of these will have a "Met/ Not Met" rating.
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Based on the scoring systems, 15 percent will be classified as "top performing," 70 percent will be "core" and 15 percent as "low. This will "align with your GPD payout."
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"Starting with our 2025 performance year's GDP program, if GDP is funded, top performers will be given 2x GDP funding, core performers 1x GDP funding, and low performers will be skipped."
GDP refers to IBM's "growth-driven profit" program, which links some incentives and bonuses to both the staffer's performance and the company's own financial performance.
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IBM says its data indicates "we haven't done a good enough job of differentiating and rewarding top performers, but now, we have an opportunity to change that.
"These changes are designed to align IBMers' efforts and outputs with the execution of our strategy to be the world's premier asset-based consultancy and bring greater transparency and rewards to IBM's incentives program."
[5]Meta's plan to erase 5% of workforce starts today
[6]We need a volunteer to literally crawl over broken glass to fix this network
[7]Binned off staff, slashed stock options. What's next? Ah yes, bigger C-suite bonuses
[8]Trump can't quickly or easily kill the CHIPS Act, but he can fire the workers funded by it
Revenue in the Consulting division was $20.84 billion in [9]IBM's 2024 ended December 31, down 2 percent year-on-year. James Kavanaugh, CFO [10]said on an earnings call in January:
"We continue to see clients re-prioritizing their IT spending towards digital transformation and AI initiatives for cost optimization and operational efficiency."
The profit margin for Consulting was 9.9 percent, down from 10.2 percent in the prior year. ®
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With the bottom line in mind, IBM is looking to find [12]$3.5 billion in productivity initiatives this year , in line with 2024, and it seems inevitable that the "refreshed performance experience" metrics will be used to this end, identifying those that don't cut the mustard. ®
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/10/meta_to_toss_5_of/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/14/on_call/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/22/meta_pumps_executive_bonuses/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/19/trump_layoffs_nist/
[9] https://newsroom.ibm.com/2025-01-29-IBM-RELEASES-FOURTH-QUARTER-RESULTS
[10] https://www.ibm.com/downloads/documents/us-en/11ed3283ae56ec7c
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[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/30/ibm_q4_2024/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Manager must Manage
I know in the case of IBM they also like to punish older people who due to the look of society when they were recruited are the often privileged white male demographic as well because they dared to stay and expect the pension... they were promised. This can mean with policy like this one they are not in the favored 85% either. This is also fine with his orangeness as he would put it he has cut red tape so business if free to innovate and puts trust in the market whilst de regulating the market because that ends well.
Re: Manager must Manage
McKinsey popularized the approach ages ago. Constant churn with zero controls based on performance and instead based on perception and which managers will fight for their charges.
If we don't like his behavior, we don't have to pay him the double bonus.
What don't we like about his behavior then?
That fact that he expects us to pay the double bonus.
Ah, smart.
If the past still holds this is alot of gobble de gook.
Back in the day a people manager was allocated xx amount of top slot, yy amount of middle slots, and zz amount of bottom of the barrel slots.
In reality your performance could be much higher than average but if no slots are are available you are sent to the back of the line.
Those on the bottom are many times not there because of performance issues but rather they are gray haired relics of a former era or used common sense when they pushed back on a management directive.
In 37 years I've never seen an annual IBM rating that rationally rated an employees performance. Too much office politics gets put into play.
Hopefully they'll introduce uniforms
Well, not uniforms as such, but permitted colours of business suit. Bottom 15% get to wear a dark brown suit. The 70% of drones get to wear beige. And the 15% of manager's favourites get to dress in indigo. That'll help business customers know what to expect of any IBMer they have the misfortune to encounter.
IF the bonus is awarded
There will be some small print along the lines of 'all divisions must meet their targets' and one tiny division in the back end of nowhere will miss its target by 0.1%, so nobody will get a bonus. This will only apply below a certain level of course, as senior people make valued individual contributions.
"closer alignment between pay and performance."
Bad news for the CEO then. I wonder if they are going to try and claw back some money from the last few ?
IBM Consulting workers told management wants to 'more closely align pay, performance'
In other words, they want to reduce the wage bill by assorted snakey methods such as giving everyone worse performance reviews however unjustified that may be.
Manager must Manage
Just because managers say 70% are doing the plodding work 15% are doing great things and 15% are lazy does not make it so. This is very much people wanting their own facts.
Rather than trim the frozen middle of middle managers somebody spouted enough words in the direction of people who can co sign policy to punish the lowest performers regardless of if that year 80% 90% or 100% did all that was asked of them. 15% must suffer a reduced bonus and even if 100% missed targets the 15% who got closest get rewarded. This is all about saying the 15% we pick are the ones driving success and the 15% we punish deserve it and nothing to do with job performance. In a work from home world where many younger tech professionals were not born when managers qualified they are fighting for relevance and authority. Instead of getting rid of the ones no longer needed and finding a useful way to engage those that are needed the higher ups who are ages with or older than the middle managers picked their side it doesn't hurt that those forced back to the office and punished even if they do hit their target when everyone else does because they are not in the favorite 85% are often female and or younger and or minority so it aligns with he who is always orange. Collective bonuses when the organization hits targets and +ve incentive to improve performance in all but misconduct cases has been known by the HR bods who actually went to university to study HR to be more effective than any strategy which deprives under performers of anything for a long long time.
When open source means half of what your business is built on can be had free and you literally exist because you provide competent support to public sector organizations and business who are risk averse, upsetting the competent people who make that happen and driving them to work for outfits supporting open source alternative just as well as you for less money seems like lets call it a bold strategy for growth.