LOP14380USEN

How IBM uses workforce science, analytics and
collaboration tools to build its Smarter Workforce.
Engaging employees
to drive the business

Engaging Employees to Drive the Business
2
Contents
The IBM Smarter Workforce Story 3
Talent 4
Big Insights from Big Data 5
Talent Acquisition 6
Predictive Retention 7
Work 8
The IBM Workforce 9
Social, Data and Cloud 10
Cloud Flexibility and Cost Efficiency 11
Expertise at IBM 12
Culture 13
Social Business: Unlocking Innovation 14
In a Social World 15
Think Academy 16
Workforce “Jams” 17
Global Engagements 18
Conclusion 19

3
IBM recognized, in this age of the empowered individual, the need to transform
the way we work. We also recognized that our most important asset—our people—
had to be at the center of that change.
Drawing upon our depth and breadth of knowledge and experience in workforce
science, analytics, social collaboration tools and digital technologies, we developed
what we call Smarter Workforce. It puts our employees at the center of our
business; engaging them to help our clients drive change, fuel innovation, create
business value and sustain competitive advantage. We focused on three dimensions:
Talent
We want the best talent…and we get it. Based on workforce science, our talent
suite enables us to understand what is unique about people and build the hiring,
development and retention mechanisms to make them successful.
Work
We provide our employees the technologies to connect to customers, partners and
each other, across the network. We can identify gaps and opportunities, predict
trends and take action whenever and wherever needed.
Culture
By cultivating an engaging work environment, IBM can directly connect actions to
business strategy, which has led to increased efficiency, productivity and agility.
By viewing these three core employee-focused components not as separate but
as interdependent, IBM is able to attract, engage and develop an innovative and
customer-focused workforce that will continue to rapidly adapt to changing
business conditions.
The IBM Smarter Workforce Story

4
Talent
We use workforce science and analytics to attract, engage,
develop and retain our best fit talent, and help them do
meaningful work.

5
Insight into human behavior is greater than it has ever been. We know what makes
people good at what they do, and we understand the dynamics of talent and the
science of human behavior. Analytics transform the way people decisions are made.
Using workforce science and analytics, IBM matches capabilities to business needs
to attract, engage, develop and retain “best fit” individuals for our high-value roles.
Insights gained from data and analytics equip our managers to answer some tough
questions:
• What is the propensity for top performers to leave the business?
• What are the most effective recruitment techniques?
• Do higher employee engagement scores drive sales?
• What’s the difference between good vs. great performance?
• How do we improve the quality of hires?
• What are the key indicators of employee turnover?
• How can we improve succession planning throughout the ranks?
Big Insights from Big Data

6
Figure 3. New2Blue Community.
At IBM, successful talent acquisition is defined by
attracting the right candidates to the right roles
through precision and science, and using social tools
to make them more productive more quickly. Our
globally integrated recruitment strategy begins with
communicating the “why IBM” value proposition
across IBM’s career website, external job sites and
social media.
Talent Acquisition
IBM developed and deployed a toolkit that provides
hiring teams with globally consistent messaging,
creative guidance, templates and imagery. Our
strategy centers on directing traffic to our career site,
which not only provides job listings but also educates
candidates about working for IBM.
IBM recognized that attrition is highest in the first 90
days after hire. Creation of a social community called
Figure 1. IBM career website.
New2Blue paves the way for new IBM employees
to quickly connect with colleagues, find experts and
access all the resources they need to perform their
jobs. With the New2Blue community, our first-month
attrition rate plunged from the mid-teens to single
digits. We realized tremendous cost savings in the
form of turnover avoidance and faster productivity
and time to value.
Figure 2. Soon2Blue Community.

7
We know that retaining our top talent is critical not only to maintaining a competitive advantage, but to reducing turnover cost as well. IBM’s multi-faceted analysis uses
survey technology and analytics to impact retention practices.
Predictive Retention
Discuss options to put analytics into
steady state production use and create
a retention plan across the workforce.
Identify the factors that led to attrition
by surveying exiting employees on an
ongoing basis to enable immediate
action and insight.
Employ retention analytics to identify
the characteristics and profiles of
employees who are likely to voluntarily
leave in order to predict future attrition.
Executive summary of analyses enables
action on the specific risk factors to
prevent future attrition, and provides
insight into ROI and impact to business/
key positions.
Operationalize Survey
AnalyzeAct

8
We get work done by connecting employees, customers
and partners to enable a collaborative work experience that
is in-context, powered by analytics and delivered anytime,
anywhere.
Work

9
430K
employees
35%work
remotely
40Knew hires
a year
100+acquisitions
50%<5 years
of service
170countries
• 430,000 geographically diverse employees
• New hire, remote and new acquisition employees
are a large part of the workforce
• All employees are connected through IBM’s social
and collaboration tools
• Connected employees are engaged, and are
collaborating to drive innovation, create value for
customers and move the business forward
The IBM Workforce

10
The way we work is rapidly changing. Mobile access
to information is increasingly pervasive, while cloud
applications are delivering on-demand flexibility not
possible with traditional on-premise systems.
Big data and analytics are driving workforce insights
and enabling informed, data-driven decisions on
everything from recruitment to talent development
and workforce planning.
IBM has not only embraced the concept of the
rapidly changing work environment, but has also
redefined it in Smarter Workforce.
Smarter Workforce:
• drives people-centric engagement for productivity
and brand value
• exploits data as the new basis of competitive
advantage
• uses cloud as a business growth engine
Social, Data and Cloud

11
The transformation of IBM Human Resources Before After
8
70%
4001600
150
0%
HR operation centers
Staff involved in HR delivery who are
located in operation centers
HR applications
%
IBM chose to deploy in the cloud for greater IT and business flexibility. This
allowed us to turn our HR system into not just a system of record, but a system
of engagement that enhances anywhere, anytime access for high-level employee
performance.
Figure 4. Cloud systems have played a key role in the rationalization of IBM HR systems and processes.
Cloud Flexibility and Cost Efficiency
Ease of deployment and lower cost also factored into cloud HR systems
implementation. These systems can be deployed in 20 to 30 percent less time
and cost than traditional systems, with lower ongoing maintenance expenses. A
transition towards cloud-based HR has been an important element in enabling us
to reduce the number of HR applications and operations centers.

12
Faster response to client needs for expert insight
truly sets IBM apart from the competition and
helped drive the creation of Expertise. Expertise is
a discovery tool that allows IBMers to quickly find
colleagues who can provide the insight needed to do
their jobs.
IBM Expertise is based on the belief that, in a social
world, what you share is as important as what you
know, and that we can infer IBMers’ expertise
through social and analytics.
The tool mines and analyzes data from the many
places where IBMers get their work done. IBM
Expertise provides a single profile and digital
representation of an IBMer’s expertise, based on
information from existing data sources. It is enriched
by what IBMers are known for, the experiences
they’ve had, the networks they’re connected to and
the content they author or represent.
Expertise at IBM
Accessible in multiple formats
Easy to use
Increases efficiency
Various data sources
Comprehensive keyword filter

13
We nurture an engaging environment and culture built
on trust, transparency and responsiveness, informed by
analytics and grounded in a common vision of success.
Culture

14
Social Business: Unlocking Innovation
The new paradigm of the social business is at the center of IBM’s transformation.
With a variety of programs and tools such as IBM Connections, the social
platform used by more than 300,000 IBMers, IBM has opened the door to new
collaboration and innovation across the workforce. People are now sharing
original content and experiences, leveraging advice and learning from others, and
cultivating dynamic virtual communities, at scale and without boundaries.
These social interactions enable people to rapidly learn, act with greater
confidence and influence others in entirely new ways. This mobilization of
collective intelligence ultimately positions IBM to deliver more customer-focused
products and services and improve our agility in anticipating and reacting to client
needs. In a social business environment, IBM has been able to:
• Build distinct expertise by making it easy for people to learn, locate experts and
access relevant information based on the collective knowledge of specialized
communities.
• Foster stronger relationships by creating a more analytics-driven environment
personalized at every touch point to optimize decision-making and motivate
action.
• Optimize workforce talent by reinventing how we recruit, motivate and retain
the best talent using workforce science, analytics and comparative benchmarks.
The social business at scale
300,000active IBMers on our
Connections social platform
200,000social communities at IBM
30,000IBMers in client
collaboration hubs

15
For a manager, the digital workplace provides
quick and integrated access for team building
and job administration. Hiring, onboarding,
performance and social collaboration capabilities
are provided all in one place with an engaging
persona-based experience that facilitates ease of
use and quick action.
At IBM, the digital workplace was the catalyst for
such initiatives as social business, Expertise
Locator, Think Academy, workforce “jams” and the
Corporate Service Corps.
“In a social world, what’s more important is not
necessarily just what you know, it’s what you share.
You’ve got to keep that front and center.”
— Ginni Rometty, IBM CEO

16
Think Academy is a new approach to fostering a
learning movement for IBMers. This education
program leverages rich content to inspire
conversations and creativity on strategic topics like
cloud computing, analytics, social business, mobile
and more.
The first Friday of every month is Think Friday,
with CEO Ginni Rometty and other IBM senior
executives and clients delivering a series of sessions,
videos and interviews to dive deeper into the IBM
point of view. The Think Academy site, accessible
from any device, anywhere, serves as a resource for
all 400,000+ IBMers. Dedicated tracks tailor content
to client-facing and technical IBMers, with direct
linkage to strategic assets and IBM experts.
Think Academy
“Every IBMer, I don’t care
what their job is, goes
through this.”
- Ginni Rometty, IBM CEO

17
At IBM we engage our people through what we call “jams” and social media. A
jam is a large-scale, 72-hour event that invites all employees to participate and
comment on a topic. These popular events first debuted more than a decade ago,
when we used “values jams” to enhance our three values—dedication to every
client’s success, innovation that matters and trust and personal responsibility—to
be more contemporary and driven to our future.
In 2013, participation in the Client Experience Jam reached record levels of
engagement with over 248,000 IBMers participating from 150 countries.
Workforce “Jams”
2013 Client Experience Jam Participation
248,000+
IBMers
14
CxOs
150
countries
98
hours
brainstorming
8.5
million
page views
24,000
threads
published
127,856
posts
Defining the behaviors that make us IBM

18
IBM’s Corporate Service Corps sends some of IBM’s most talented employees to
provide pro bono counsel to countries in the developing world that are grappling
with issues that intersect business, technology and society. Bringing skills in
technology, scientific research, marketing, finance, HR and law, they work with
local governments, non-profit civic groups and small business on such issues as
economic development, energy, transportation, education and healthcare.
Since its inception in 2008, IBM has dispatched more than 2,400 IBM employees
from 50 countries on more than 187 engagements in 34 countries, where they
have completed more than 850 team assignments.
By giving employees an opportunity to hone their professional skills, the
program produces more loyal employees and future IBM leaders who are more
collaborative and culturally literate.
Global Engagements
“If only 100 of Fortune 500 companies sent 500 of their top talent on such assignments, we
could collectively deploy 50,000 of the most talented leaders around the world to solve some
of the most difficult problems facing society and, in the process, create remarkable goodwill.”
— Stanley S. Litow, VP, Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs and President, IBM International Foundation
What we have accomplished
An IBM team helped the Cross River province of Nigeria design a
program to provide financial, healthcare and literacy assistance to
poor women and children.
IBM’s advice enabled a network of dozens of children’s hospitals and
youth centers in Brazil to become more efficient.
A financial services agency in South Africa is now making consumer
loans with better repayment rates, thanks to IBM advice.

19
Conclusion
Smarter Workforce allows us to look at work through a new lens. It’s a unique approach that puts our
employees at the center of the business. We discovered that engaged employees help drive change, fuel
innovation, create business value and give us a sustainable competitive advantage. They are also more likely to
drive deeper relationships with our clients, which in turn drive business outcomes.
Further, the same unique value—analytics, workforce science, work experience, social collaboration, breadth
of portfolio and depth of experience—that we have captured for ourselves, can be brought to our clients in
the Smarter Workforce solution. As we’ve done for ourselves, we can help organizations embrace Smarter
Workforce by:
• Designing the right workforce—attracting and developing the right talent
• Instilling the right culture
• Getting work done in new ways to speed value creation with networks spanning employees, clients and partners
Engaging Employees to Drive the Business...that’s what Smarter Workforce is all about.

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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2014
IBM Global Services
Route 100
Somers, NY 10589
U.S.A.
Produced in the United States of America
August 2014
All Rights Reserved
IBM, the IBM logo and ibm.com are trademarks or registered trademarks
of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other
countries, or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked
on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol
(® or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law
trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such
trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other
countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at
“Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml
Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service
marks of others.
References in this publication to IBM products and services do not
imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which
IBM operates.

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