Bob CollinsAt one time, IBM was considered an innovative, model employer, and boasted of the number of its employees who telecommuted. Those days are over.
Cubicle farms are calling the employees back and IBM has become the latest company to pull the plug on telecommuting.
The company has told employees to come back to the office or find another job. Oh, tell us again about the worker shortage.
“In many fields, such as software development and digital marketing, the nature of work is changing, which requires new ways of working,” a company spokesman tells the Wall St. Journal. “We are bringing small, self-directed agile teams together, and we are investing heavily in new facilities, tools and contemporary work spaces for these teams.”
“It’s incredibly bad PR, especially for the millennial and younger generations, for whom work-life balance is a priority in recruiting and retention,” Elizabeth Dukes, who heads a workplace management systems company, tells the San Jose Mercury News. “They will have to compensate in other ways (like) career path, advancement opportunity, engaging workplace, community contribution and environmental support in order to become an employer of choice moving forward.”
Need we point out that IBM markets systems that make it easier for employees to telecommute?
