IBM ends funding for employee retirement clubs IBM has confirmed to former staff that it will no longer provide grants for the Retired Employee Club, meaning no more subsidized short trips to the Italian Riviera or golf days. The clubs are regionally split. In the UK, for example, there are 28 local organizations that have run short trips or national tournaments including …
Is that they didn't do this before now.
I lasted 15 years at IBM before I'd had enough. It's a company that's lost its way and doesn't value its staff. It's the death of a thousand cuts. Bit by bit it just became a worse and worse place to work. This is just the latest nail in the coffin of a company I was once proud to say I worked for.
I initially (and erroneously) read the following text as:
"Joining a club was free for all Big Blue retirees with at least 10 years of service under their belt, regardless of PRISON age.
And now I read your comment.
...
Maybe my psychic powers are better than I originally expected.
When I started work in the UK in the 80s all the big companies had social clubs. I mean buildings, with bars, squash, tennis and badminton courts, football and even cricket pitches, with teams in the local leagues. Membership cost very little and they were always busy. The company had an annual budget that you could bid for to buy kit for the club teams or pay travel costs for trips. Companies then seemed to exist as much for their employees and families as for making money. Now the clubs are all gone - sold for housing in my area - and companies are solely focused on making money. I don't think that table tennis and bean bags can make up for it.
I'm aware of at least two sites in a former nationalised industry that had 9-hole golf courses attached to them as part of their sports and social clubs.
Privatisation and subsequent carve up meant these were sold off, but at least one is still a functioning golf course.
You're sorry that hundreds, possibly thousands of people, are enjoying a facility that caters to the hobby they love? Presumably because you don't like it?
Are you narcissistic or a manager?
Not everyone on this planet finds pleasure in the same things you do and our species benefits from the variety. Stop being a grouch and accept that other people have the right to their own hobbies and interests.
Of course people can enjoy their hobbies and interests - up to a point. Obviously a line has to be drawn for morris dancing, trainspotting, playing bagpipes and so on.
Golf is just ridiculous. As Robin Williams said many years ago, it's a game where middle aged middle class white men get to dress as black pimps.
See you in the clubhouse for a G&T - provided you're wearing a jacket and tie after 6pm.
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Towards the end of my period of employment at IBM (1984-2008) I was increasingly asked for my "serial number" rather than my "personnel number". I generally answered along the lines of "I don't have one because I'm not a washing machine" but this usually just confused the nice lady in Bratislava asking the question. But it was another manifestation of the same hideous "HR" thing, and another reason why I decided it was time to part company with the company.
The Quakers took it to the extreme, certainly, but a lot of Victorian industrialists shared those paternalistic ideals to some extent. When I first entered the world of work, most of the biggest employers nearby were companies that had started as family businesses in the 19th century, and they all had really nice sports & social clubs, with sports pitches, bowling greens, bars and function rooms... one even had a rifle range. All of those are gone now, sold off for housing development.
I worked at a local authority where they closed the social club, but it was already dying on its feet. Taking an hour for lunch and a pint at the staff club bar stopped being socially acceptable, and socialising with your workmates stopped being something people wanted to do. I think I have seen about three of my former colleagues since I took early retirement after 25 years, and its never been something I wanted to do. I think perhaps times have changed and it has just stopped being social club time. I don't suppose it helps that senior execs don't stay with a company for any length of time anyway.
Health and mental well-being are seeing a resurgence as corporate cap feathers. But benefits are of course strictly for current employees I expect. No doubt someone trendy gave a good economic case for looking after the people who actively contribute to your revenue stream's viability.
We hoped COVID would do that for us.
There's only so many times we can raise retirement before we take the initiative and start defunding the NHS to shore up resources for the pensions shortfall. I would expect huge waiting lists and low cancer screening to hit us soo-
Oh wait.
The great resignation is, not that employees choose to move, but rather, that organisations have resigned themselves to people moving rather than doing anything about it.
I personally think this is more or less the definition of insanity, when one's outfit's reputation derives mostly from experienced personnel and the value they add.
This is certainly not unique to IBM, the entire HR industry is waving white flags, and has been for a couple of years now. Fixing it isn't hard. Cut the ludicrous exec pay and rebalance the proportions going to staff (and/or staff numbers).
I could cite a certain FTSE100 company where I currently work, where approximately 1/5th of the annual personnel budget goes on Exec pay. 1/5th of the payroll going to less than 0.01% of the workforce! This information is openly available in the public domain.
If you aren't outraged by this, you're not human. Also, said company is going to hell in a handbasket unless things improve. I'll do what I can; but if it doesn't improve, I'll be off. Making the point about the great resignation indeed.
And that sums up the entire culture that has evolved over the last 10 to 15 years. Execs have more pay, perks and privileges than ever before whist at the same time constantly chipping away to reduce what the employees (the people that actually make the company what it is) have.
The push to WFH has increased the trend as companies now see those facilities used less and less so that they are now "not viable".
Clubs and so on are becoming whittled down and from what I see, tend to be focused on the activities the execs want.
Not true.
When the super-rich buy stuff, they borrow against their hoard, increasing the price paid for the things they do buy.
They'd be prepared to pay less if they had to actually spend from the hoard.
The hoard itself doesn't need to get touched for this inflation to happen.
(It is of course a lot more complicated in the real world)
What are they going to do with all this money?
Invest it in assets that their mates on the political side can then inflate so they can make more money to invest in stuff that inflates and makes more money.
These are generally boring people. Their worst excesses will be stuff like wearing an item of brightly coloured cloting at a dresscode event, and maybe they will buy a newpaper or a few politicians or create a think-tank, so they can build some kind of audience for their mostly boring and ill-concieved ideas.
Elon Musk is pretty much the outlier.
politics of envy?
no idea which ftse 100 business you are moaning about but what if its highly profitable and has not many staff compared to execs? What if it has a high number of execs compared to others? That 1/5 of pay to execs could be anything, without proper numbers its just hyperbole.
i bet those execs are not compensated as much as those across the pond.
https://www.therichest.com/rich-powerful/amazon-ceo-andy-jassy-212-million-compensation/
also i bet not as much as those from private companies and not from this betting business
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/18/uks-top-earning-ceo-of-bet365-denise-coates-bags-422-million-payday.html
If a business is able to make loads of profits and pay its people well i don't have an issue with that.
i have an issue when businesses make loads of profits and then go out of their way not pay their staff. its not the same as paying their execs 1/5 of the total payroll especially if non exec average pay is £50k plus!!!
It's not highly profitable. It is a steady dividend payer, but will never make a killing, because it's not allowed to.
The org has downsized significantly in the space of the last 4 years to satisfy some short-term cost considerations. It is reeling from the loss of that experience while simultaneously moaning about shortages of staff, people leaving, and the lack of STEM grads to recruit from. It has serious problems delivering on projects on shorter timescales; mostly because of the loss of skills.
I don't need to name the company, because I suspect this is actually applicable to multiple FTSE constituents.
Envy is not the problem. Seeing the long term viability of the business squandered, is. As a shareholder, and employee, I have a vested interest in the business doing well in the long run. What I see right now, it is in serious trouble. And I'm offloading shares, funnily enough. As noted above, if things do not improve, I am out.
If I were a pension fund manager doing my due diligence on what divvy shares to buy, I would be running a mile.
If the exec were earning their pay with their eye on the ball, I'd be OK. I see the ball not merely being dropped, but cut off and sliced, deep fried and served to unsuspecting investors.
Feel free to disagree but when shit starts breaking I can smile with a smug I told you so.
10k staff 0.01% being executives = 100
£50k no exec average pay = £495m = 4/5 of pay
£123.75 for those 100 execs = average of £1.2375m per exec.
Seems like a lot but is not especially when the boss of tescos is earning £4m plus other stuff we won’t hear about.
In 2020 ftse 100 ceo average pay was £2.7m.
I assume execs = all execs including the ceo, vp’s etc, companies could have north of 100 “execs”.
£600m for payroll is not a huge amount for a business making lots of profit.
The UK’s most profitable FTSE 100 company is little known 3i (private equity and venture capital) which generates a staggering £5,206,406 ($6,858,685 USD) of profit per employee. The Oil & Gas industry generates the highest revenue per employee at £3,733,442 ($4,918,268 USD).However, Real Estate Investment Trusts are the UK’s most profitable industry, with companies averaging just over £686,000 ($903,705 USD) of profit per employee.
https://merchantmachine.co.uk/profit-per-employee/
I’m not disbelieving you ac it’s just that ftse 100 has some huge earners and also some strugglers that get relegated. Seems like your company is toward that lower end, but is not reflective of the most successful ftse 100 Members.
just eat is at the lower end of ftse 100 and has profits of £50k per person
You are soooo right
So let’s say 500k staff, 0.01% execs would be 50 globally.
29 of those companies have less than 10k staff, 0.01% of 10k would be 1 person.
Only 11 of the 100 have more than 100k employees, only 3 have more than 200k staff with 0.01% giving number of execs ranging from 22 to 55.
Regardless there are a lot of ftse companies who will have more than 0.01% of staff as execs.
And only 36 who have profit per employee less than £50k. Profit per employee not revenue or pay per employee but profit.
FTSE 100 are the 100 most successful uk registered publicly traded businesses.
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OED prefers -ize. Really? Citation Needed.
My compromise:
• Those words that came into English either from Latin or French use '-ise'.
• Those that came into English directly from Greek use '-ize'.
There are an estimated 400 million speakers of English in and around India. My guess is that, by usage alone, '-ise' is more common.
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The clubs are subsidized by IBM, not owned by it. This is even true of the Hursley club (which curates cricket, and football pitches and tennis courts that are used by the village teams). The mailing list is subject to GDPR, and again is not owned by IBM.
The retirees clubs are probably set up broadly the same as any number of social clubs around the country, as private organizations, sometimes registered as charities, with the normal articles of association for a private club.
It's the entrance criteria that differentiate them from other clubs.
Strictly speaking, the Hursley club is an employees club, not just a retirees one, although people who were employed by IBM but have since left are eligible to join, regardless of when they left.
During the lockdown, the catering facilities for the whole Hursley site were shutdown. For the essential workers who were on site to keep the lights on for the systems there, the Hursley clubhouse was the only place to get food, so it was filling an important role that IBM UK as a whole benefited from.
IBM these days reminds me of Logan's Run...
The thing is, when they have to provide skills for their own legacy hardware and software, the only place they can go is the contract market.
There's a lot of contractors working for certain parts of IBM. This often means that anybody you meet there above the age of about 45 will either be someone high up in management (or sometime product development), someone just waiting out the maturation of their pension (if they are still on the C plan), or a contractor!
I speak from personal experience, as a contractor working for IBM.
Cricket pitch, baseball diamond, and an indoor sports hall where badminton is quite popular, along with the clubhouse which serves not fantastic drinks and food.
There used to be a rifle range onsite back when Hursley was Vickers, but it's long covered by undergrowth. Shame, as the stable block it backed up against is now IBM EMEA's legal department. Convenient.
Would you have even been entitled to this anyway as a new employee? Most of these Boomer packages have long since disappeared, such as Defined/Final Salary Pensions whilst everyone else gets a 4/7% split if lucky. And in fact it just puts the costs up and pushes salaries for younger people down. It would be amazing the contempt that would manifest if many young people understood that the reason they are barely earning 30-40k in companies like IBM (and hence why they can't hire any talent en-masse) is because the company is obligated to paying a comfy retirement for people that retired a long time ago on a good salary (with inflation adjustments)
It seems you correct, it is managed by L&G, however IBM is the one on the hook. Any shortfall will eat into buybacks and future spending. With ravaging inflation, soon to become stagflation it seems tough decisions might need to be made. This generation could yet again choose to screw over their kids and grandkids for a few extra years of luxury and benefit though by forcing governments to bail out the pensions funds, assuming they still have enough voting power.
https://www.pionline.com/pension-funds/ibm-add-300-million-non-us-pension-plans
https://fortune.com/2014/11/11/longevity-pensions-ibm-caterpillar/
It used to be that IBMers who joined straight after finishing education used to achieve maximum pension rights in the final salary scheme at about the age of 55, give or take a year or two depending on whether they joined as school leavers or graduates.
It was very normal for people to retire from IBM in their mid-50s, so often were still very active and employable.
Two things stop this now. Firstly the final salary pension scheme is long gone, and people don't tend to stay in IBM for this length of time for other reasons, either personal or as a result of being RA'd.
Can't speak for the UK, but in the US the thought of doing tech work for the same employer for 10 years is almost unheard of. Quitting also often produces a bigger raise (at your new job somewhere else) than staying.
In a world where you work for one company for 3-5yrs and move, a lot of the trappings of classic business culture just make no sense.... Pensions aren't portable, retirement accounts are.... Club memberships for people who retire with 10 years of service? Who's going to stay long enough to qualify?
Given that, it's not surprising that companies shift their benefits expenditures to fit the amount of time workers will actually be there....
Unlike you, we're neither poor or bitter. Enjoy your 'youth' while you can and remember your cliched "Boomer" jibes when you eventually develop a sense of perspective and empathy, only to discover that the next round of pre-pubescent wannabes are referring to you with the same level of spite and malice.
I find it hard to feel sympathy for any pensioner with multiple homes bought for a fraction of their current market value and netting close to the minimum wage per annum in rent.
I seem to never meet a boomer not in such a situation (at least 1 spare property), many are also on defined pension schemes and when the underfunding scandals start to hit I have a fair feeling many will call on the government to screw the young on services and higher education to meet the shortfall.
Happened in 2008 and the next few years of stagflation are going to kick off another spectacular inter-generational political war.
The lack of perspective and empathy on the part of stereotypical boomers is more or less precisely the problem. By definition, boomers are the ones that voted in Thatcher and successors; and the complete destruction of any sort of long term planning for national need.
I was "lucky" enough to be able to buy a first house in 2004, when at the time a mortgage was property was 4x salary before tax. An average property was also, approx 4 to 6 times the average salary. This was a quite achievable level in mere mortal average jobs.
Today, the pricing is massively more vicious; with average national house prices running at 8 to 10 times the average salary.
Throw in a mix of sky-high rent, rip-off student loans and very high operating expenses in; saving up the 50k+ needed to get started on a shoebox of a house is simply not viable even in a well above average job.
$DEITY help you if you are in a line of work that isn't a trade or professional. And equally, why do we value those "low paying jobs" so low if we, the reasonably well paid professionals don't want to do them!
There is absolutely some truth to the statement that the death rate and reduction in Tory voter are more or less synonymous.
Is it any wonder that very large proportions of the working population want change, and/or are disenfranchised with politics full stop.
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