IBM Invests In Retraining

IBM plans to commit $25 million this year to the retraining effort, first hinted at by IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano earlier this year at PartnerWorld. The training program, called the Human Capital Alliance, aims to train former IBM employees on key skills such as Linux programming and business transformation services, said Mike Borman, IBM's vice president and general manager, Global Business Partners.

"The Human Capital Alliance is a discreet fund with special emphasis on developing skills of [IBM] people whose jobs have been eliminated," Borman said.

Once the IBM employees have been retrained, they will move into the Skills for Growth program, which will match former IBM technical, sales and management people with Business Partners that need those specific skills in their organizations. He said Business Partners will fill out request forms for new employees, including the skills, location and background of the people they need. IBM will then sort through the requests and match them with the newly trained former IBM employees.

"I'm definitely interested in this," said John Sheaffer, CEO of Sysix Technologies, an Oak Brook, Ill., integrator. "Our biggest problem is finding someone who can represent a product like IBM, yet understands the needs of a Business Partner."

Skills for Growth will roll out in the Americas and Asia in the second half of the year and has been operational in Europe since 2002, Borman said. "In Europe during 2002-2003, we moved over 400 [IBM] people into Business Partner organizations," he said.

Borman acknowledged that he hoped placing former IBM employees with channel partners would strengthen Business Partner loyalty. "The more former IBM people that have the right skills that join our partners, I would hope that they would be most loyal to IBM and influence customer decisions to IBM," he said.

But Harvey Najim, president and CEO of Sirius Computer Solutions, San Antonio, IBM's largest North American solution provider Business Partner and a former IBM employee himself, said the placement effort likely wouldn't help his organization. "We don't have a problem finding people," he said. "People are always calling us."