The CEO of IBM, Arvind Krishna, whose hybrid-cloud computing business has benefited from the rise of remote work has a message for the 260,000 employees of International Business Machines Corp.
Remote Work Hazardous to Career: IBM CEO
The CEO of IBM, whose hybrid-cloud computing business has benefited from the rise of remote work, said he’s not forcing any staffers to come into the office just yet, but those who don’t would be hard-pressed to get promoted, especially into managerial roles. He has said that remote work can be hazardous to your career.
During his interview, he said that “Being a people manager when you’re remote is just tough because if you’re managing people, you need to be able to see them once in a while. It doesn’t need to be every minute. You don’t need to function under those old ‘Everybody’s under my eye’ kind of rules, but at least sometimes.”
This new point of view for a global CEO adds to the growing debate over the merits of remote versus in-person work, with some CEOs arguing that workers — particularly younger staff — need to be on site more often than not for learning and mentorship opportunities, while other experts point to research showing that workers are happier and even more productive when they have the opportunity to work from home.
However, as per the data from economists who track work-from-home trends, the office based staff spends more than 25% more time in career-development activities than their remote counterparts.
Krishna said while speaking about the company’s return-to-office policy that “It seems to me that we work better when we are together in person. We encourage you to come in, we expect you to come in, we want you to come in.”
As per the data from a team of economists who have tracked the topic since the pandemic began, nearly half of the US employees who can work can home now have a hybrid arrangement.
Speaking of a purely remote jobs, then only one in five are fully remote. The data shows that working from home is most common in the technology and professional services sectors that IBM competes in.
However, amid rising layoffs rising and freeze or decline in job openings, some of the workers are genuinely concerned about working from home affecting their job security.
Work from Home Makes it Difficult to Move Into Other Roles
Currently, IBM’s 80% workforce works in a remote arrangement. Krishna said that remote arrangements are best suited for specific “individual contributor” roles like customer service or software programmers.
“Moving from there to another role is probably less likely because nobody’s observing them in another context. It will be tougher. Not impossible, but probably a lot tougher.”
Krishna, who became CEO right after the pandemic hit in April 2020, said people make a choice to work remotely, but it need not be “a forever choice — it could be a choice based on convenience or circumstance.”
He said that remote workers cannot learn thing like dealing with a difficult client, or how to make trade-offs when designing a new product.
He said that “I don’t understand how to do all that remotely”.
IBM’s CEO has worked to reorient the century-old company around more profitable services like hybrid-cloud computing, where customers run their own data centers in some combination with public cloud providers such as Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
Earlier this year, company also announced job cuts earlier this year, which may amount to about 5,000 workers once completed. Still, Krishna said IBM has added to its workforce overall, bringing on about 7,000 people in the first quarter.
