Mental Well-being day - Spare me
Mental Well-being Day, well now that is a joke, IBM care not one jot about employees' physical or indeed mental health. You can be sure whatever you tell them during these sessions will one day be used against you or count towards a selection process to be rid of you. Same goes for HR, tell them nothing, they are not your friend, HR will always toe the company line and you will be out the door. Competent psychiatrists and psychologists are well aware of IBM's disgusting and harmful treatment of their employees which can only lead to stress, depression and beyond. This company will make you sick and then attempt to have you believe that somehow you are the problem.
IBM cares only about creating a false puffed up public persona as being relevant in today's Cloud/AI climate, together with it's propped up share price, both of which are heading south. It was once a company who had a semblance of respect for their customers and employees and produced excellent products but that has long gone. The bean counters have taken over the asylum, resorting to ploughing billions into share buy backs and nothing into running a relevant business. Once loyal customers who received a competent service are leaving in their droves and will not be coming back. The game is nearly up.
In the end, the top brass will be fine, they have rewarded themselves handsomely for being the creators of failure and will slink off into the sunset with their piggy banks full, what will happen the loyal, hard working, creative employees, well!!! one month's salary or a pittance statutory redundancy and that's it for decades of giving up weekends, holidays and working late nights for the cause.?
IBM senior management demonstrate the very same behaviour outlined in the Milgram experiment, bullying the first line smarmy managers to carry out their dirty work to force perfectly competent mostly older higher paid employees out simply because they want to replace them with cheap foreign labour. Fear, uncertainty and doubt are the driving forces in IBM today in a totally unhealthy and toxic environment. Nothing constructive gets done, people are too busy ticking worthless boxes and attending unending pointless conference calls in order to try and avoid the next round of sackings. IBM with their empty suitcase sound bites want all and their sundry to believe they are relevant when in fact all they do these days is to sell snake oil.
Don't let them grind you down, take legal advice from a competent employment solicitor, it may be worth the cost for an initial consultation to be aware of everything IBM don't want you to know about. Even the big IBM cannot escape the law. I know of one person in the UK who took them on and settled out of court for a six figure sum.It takes courage but it can be done.
Alternatively, go sick, use your private medical insurance to see a psychiatrist preferably, who will support you and correspond with your GP to sign you off on long term illness. Raise as many grievances as you can with IBM, it is your right and IBM must respond and deal with them by law. Put the frighteners on them, IBM can't and will be very wary to touch you while off sick, take your sickness pay and use the time to get well or look for suitable alternative employment from an employer who at least will give a rat's arse about you. It will be worth it all to escape this hell hole. Life is much sweeter without IBM but those that have experienced the machine must let those who are about to be clobbered know exactly the facts how they treat their minions. Mention employee unions to IBM and you will be treated as a traitor and a trouble maker where in fact those companies that respect and welcome employee union representation are the best and treat their employees with dignity and fairness. The simple fact is that if IBM had been unionised, they would never have been allowed to carry out their criminal and unlawful offloading of tens of thousands of experienced, older employees.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
