2. Introduction
• IBM present in India since 1992
– Presence in over 200 cities directly or indirectly through business partner
network
• Widely recognized as an employer of choice
– IBM holds numerous awards for its industry-leading employment practices
and policies.
• Chief HR officers are continually being challenged to do more
with less; to deliver top class HR services with increasingly smaller
budget; yet they are also aiming to grow. They are being
challenged to:
– Implement the most flexible and cost-efficient HR service delivery model
– Enhance employee access and services through innovative HR technology
and processes
– Create a strategic HR organization that enables enterprise change and
workforce transformation
3. Secondary Research
Mentoring and coaching to inspire
mentee to perform ‘best thinking’
and ‘best practice’
Mentoring and coaching to cause
an individual to challenge status
quo and discern facts from
opinions.
Coaches and Mentors to provide
voice of encouragement and
support
Coaches and Mentors to teach
and direct effectively as and when
the competency and experiences
tend to get lagged behind.
Coaches and Mentors to provide
constructive insights and feedback
about the protégés’ ‘blind-self’
areas.
4. Past Mentorship Program
•
•
•
•
People Manager
Executives with 7-8 years of
experience
50-60 direct mentees under
him
Each request has to be
approved by him
Proactive, not reactive
Product Manager
• Executives from same band
as People Managers
• One person may be People
Manager to some and
Project Manager to others
• Works below the People
Manager
The Mentoring Process
Set Goals (March)
Review Goals
(Dec)
Dashboard
Freeze, details
forwarded to
Mentors
Discussion of
performance
Increment
in pay
5. Need for Change
• No Mentoring for Career Development:
– Too many mentees to manage
– Program as a compulsion discouraged active
participation
• Mentoring Hierarchy:
– Need to increase mentors from different fields of
expertise
• Yearly Appraisal:
– All aspects of performance could not be
measured
– No feedback for entire year is discouraging
6. Mentoring Programs at IBM Globally
Shadow
Program
Intelligent
Mentoring
Blue
Pages
Mentoring
at IBM
7. New System at IBM
Introduction of mentoring pyramid
Executive
Mentoring
Introduction of Career Guide role for—
1)
2)
3)
4)
Help in planning employee career
Education & facilitation
Continuous feedback & evaluation
Informal psychological help
3
Career
Expert
Social Mentoring
Inverse Mentoring
2
Merging the role of People manager
and project manager for—
1) Remove dual approval
2) Increasing utility of program
1
8. Implementation
• People Manager now handles the approval, technical and psychological mentoring of the employee.
• Career Guide handles the career related mentoring of the employee
• Quarterly meet per employee between People Manager and Career Guide to ensure coherence
Mentee’s perspective
Mentor’s perspective
Increment process modification
• Phase I, April: In this the increments
are provided as per the ratings from
People Manager, Career Manager as per
the old process.
•Phase II, October: This is the new phase
introduced, known as market correction.
• Dependence of performance evaluation
of mentors on the performance of mentee
• Feedback from Mentee regarding the
mentor’s attributes
9. Recommendations
•
•
Each Mentor has generally fifty to Sixty direct mentees under him due to which
there is no scope of personalization in the mentoring process.
People tend to bypass the process if it is not part of formal appraisal process
• The company should focus more on the two levers of mentoring
pyramid- “social mentoring” and “inverse mentoring”.
• This will also bypass the problem of too many mentees for a mentor and
hence add the flavor of personalization
•
•
It was not necessary that the mentor is placed in same location as of mentee.
As a result mentees are not comfortable sharing and discussing their career
aspirations openly
• It should be ensured that the mentors are at least placed in the same
city as of the mentee
10. Recommendations
•
•
There is no formal infrastructure for people looking to gain knowledge in
particular technologies in a personalized manner.
People have to wait for specific programs to start, and there are delays when an
inadequate number of people.
• The setting up of an internal portal as an interface between employees
willing to impart training and those willing to learn new technologies.
• This would help in building an internal system of competencies, and
hence also improve employee morale
•
To improve the motivation of employees in the organization
• we recommend a Shadow Program under this program, an employee
can voluntarily signup and shadow an executive for a day.
• taking into account the large employee base in IBM, the program would
be restricted to only two levels above the employee
