Age gap in the technology industry
Welcome to
Observateur’s second blog about globalization and global indicators!
This
week, we welcome a new team member in our team, Ivy. Ivy is from China and
finished her exchange semester in Germany a while ago. Now, she is a final year
student in marketing.
For this
second blog we chose age gap as an indicator in order to analyse human
resources management in the technology industry from a global perspective.
Globalization has made boundaries more permeable where distance becomes almost
irrelevant, it also has increased the expansion of international commerce and
the growth of many MNC’s, including those from the technology sector. As
companies are seeking for strategies to overcome the challenges posed by
globalization, their employees had slowly become a source of differentiation,
managing experienced versus talented workers is a major issue in the technology
industry. In this blog, we will collect data from 2 important MNC’S in this
particular industry which are IBM and Microsoft.
Table 1: Age gap between the two countries
representing the two regions
Companies/Countries
|
USA
|
China
|
IBM
|
45.6
|
32
|
Microsoft
|
44
and +
|
26.5
|
Table 2: Employee tenure rate
Companies
|
|
IBM
|
8
|
Microsoft
|
3
|
Why there is an age gap between employees from the East versus employees
from the West in the technology industry?
We will answer to this question by analyzing 2 different aspects: the rapid
evolving market in this particular industry and the saturated knowledge but
experienced employees from the previous generation versus the new talented
generation with great potential.
1 The evolving market of technologies
The history of IT development in most part of Asia is
not as long as that in US. Take China for example, IBM, Microsoft entered into
China market in late 1990s, while DELL began its business in China in 2005. The
education of IT and high-tech started late in China. Not many Universities
provided programs for IT and high-tech until 2000. After 2000, a large number
of IT and high-tech graduates started their career in this industry. So the
average age of IT employees in China is quite young.
IT industry is a fast moving industry. The
employee’s turnover rates remain high in Asia. The reason for high turnover
rates varies among different countries. The average salary of Asian employees
is not as high as that of American employees even for those working in different
branches of the same company. A large number of Chinese IT employees leave the
industry after working two to four years, so more than 50% of Chinese IT
employees only have an experience of less than four years. Situation is
different in India; many India IT employees seek to find jobs in US. Very few
Indians can get degrees higher than bachelor. Most of them choose to go to
America after graduation. If a company has a high turnover rate, it will be not
healthy for them to grow. The costs of hiring replacements and training new
employees will be very high. The high turnover rate might become an obstacle
for the development of the whole industry in the long term. So managers in IT
companies such as IBM, Microsoft and Dell should consider how to keep employees
in Asia market. Companies can provide employees with higher salaries, better
working environment and welfares.
2 Experience versus talents
Age discrimination in IT industry exists in
both America and Asia. But the situation in Asia is worse.
In America, if you are above 45 years old and work in IT industry, it will be
impossible for you to switch to another company in the same industry. But if
you are an IT employee in China, you will be considered old when you turn to
30.
Employers in Asia tend to hire young
graduates. They think employees in IT industry must keep learning new knowledge
to make themselves competitive. It will be easier for young graduates to be
fast learners. And employees need to work intensively to catch up the project
schedules. This kind of task requires them to have bodies in good condition and
being able to work under great pressure. Employers think it will be hard for
staff older than 30 to manage the projects.
On contrary, American employers value
experience more. They prefer experienced employees neither too young nor too
old. After many years working in IT industry, many American employees become
expert in this field. They can get high salaries and be respected by their
colleagues and the society. But in Asia, due to culture differences, the
society looks down to technical staff, including IT technical employees. If
Asian technical employees do well in his job, they will be promoted to manager.
Some of them find they can achieve higher social status and higher salaries as
managers; they just leave the industry and go to other companies to pursue a
better career. Other technical employees who have been promoted know nothing
about management. They struggle as managers and end up leaving their companies.
To solve these problems, managers in both US
and Asia should eliminate age discrimination. Managers in US need to treat
employees equally regardless of their ages. When US companies, like Microsoft,
Dell and IBM, expand their business to Asia, they should stress on long term
benefits and pay more attention to employees’ experience and professional
skills. In addition, more scientific management systems which can help promoted
technical staff to perform better at work should be built in Asian companies.
How MNC’s in the technology industry
manage its global workforce?
In this
section, we will have a closer look of the internal HR policies in the two
companies mentioned above and the purpose of such practice.
IBM: Globally integrated enterprise
According
to IBM’s CEO Samuel Palmisano, the vision of a globally integrated enterprise
is about doing the right tasks, with the right skills, in the right places.
This vision about IBM posed significant challenges for IBM’s human capital and
its approach to human resource management. The IBM case study by Boudreau
stated that IBM had to face with the problem of how to deploy its more
experienced and expensive workforce located in developing countries to projects
that increasingly were located in developing countries, while at the same time
up skill the developing-country workforce to offer IBM a long term cost and
effectiveness advantage.
In order
to solve this problem, in 2003, IBM projected a unique program calls workforce
management initiative (WMI) with a forecast cost of more than US$100 million
over the course of five years. By definition, WMI at its core is a series of
strategies, policies, processes and tools that enable optimal labor deployment,
built on a foundation of learning.
On the
figure posted below, we can see that the development team of WMI has thought
clearly about different challenges that IBM is dealing with and that they needed
to change in order to transform its HR management strategy to one’s of its
strength.
This
investment made by IBM was indeed a strategic decision in terms of
international HR management and the expected payoff is now a reality. IBM job’s
repertoire has shifted from a million individuals to only 331 roles. In some
cases, this achievement can give IBM analysts an understanding whether certain
qualifications and experiences are associated with improvement in sales quotas
or not. There is only one global application transaction thanks to the data
base system by WMI and this centralization is solving the talent supply
management issue. Using the same language to communicate (defined by the
Taxonomy) has improved capacity management by matching demand and supply more
accurately and efficiently. The number of idle workers is decreased and the
fill rates are improved to over 90% in global delivery.
This system helped IBM to move one step toward its CEO’s vision of a globally integrated enterprise. Over five years, IBM invested US $230 million in this project but received a large sum of US $1.5 billion benefits!
Microsoft: enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential.
Microsoft is considered by many as an ideal place to work, and the company has won several awards for its commitment to diversity and their flexible work arrangements in the past. Since 2005, Microsoft aimed to be an employee-driven organization by offering employees flexibility, work/life balance, flexible benefit plans. According to Priyadarshini, Microsoft has adopted the `` Performance Culture Model`` as the best approach to drive its success where all the critical people metrics are categorized and measured. There are up to nine different categories such as diversity, talent management, manager capability, etc. with many performance measures.
This system helped IBM to move one step toward its CEO’s vision of a globally integrated enterprise. Over five years, IBM invested US $230 million in this project but received a large sum of US $1.5 billion benefits!
Microsoft: enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential.
Microsoft is considered by many as an ideal place to work, and the company has won several awards for its commitment to diversity and their flexible work arrangements in the past. Since 2005, Microsoft aimed to be an employee-driven organization by offering employees flexibility, work/life balance, flexible benefit plans. According to Priyadarshini, Microsoft has adopted the `` Performance Culture Model`` as the best approach to drive its success where all the critical people metrics are categorized and measured. There are up to nine different categories such as diversity, talent management, manager capability, etc. with many performance measures.
Microsoft India
HR growth model
From the
beginning Gates said that his employees were the greatest assets of the
company: `` it’s the effectiveness of our developers that determines our
success`` and `` take our 20 best people away, and Microsoft will become an
unimportant company``. The Placement Offer data over the past few years has
confirmed that Microsoft is an aggressive recruiter and is often the first
company to offer jobs to elite graduates, as well as head hunting talents at
others companies. Microsoft values their employee’s creativity and analytics
abilities rather than their experience.
Hiring
the right people is very important for Microsoft, they adopted the ``n minus
1`` strategy which means less people are employed than are required. It is
crucial to hire the right people rather than just filing a position. Microsoft
also focus on motivating its workforce, the HR department invest in
understanding employee’s needs and give them the opportunities and environment
to allow self-development.
Microsoft
also adopted a consistent reward system where employees has two annual reviews
where they can discuss with their managers about their performance evaluation
and negotiate pay increases, bonus awards and stock options if an employee is
considered a long-term asset of the company. This system offers two rewards
paths available, allowing those with technical skills to advance as experts and
those with strong conceptual skills as managers.
Blog Extension
Thanks to all the comments which have let us gain further
insights into our blog's topic. Some readers thought our wording "aging
gap" means age distribution in China and America. We think it is necessary
to make it clear that we are comparing the differences between average age of
IT employees in China and that in America and investigating the reasons behind.
There is also a commenter thought that U.S held no more
importance in experience when it came to IT companies. In our blog, we
explained that there is age discrimination in IT industry of both two countries.
When we say that Americans value experience more, it doesn't mean that they
always put experience before age. They will consider more about experience when
hiring and laying off employees, while Chinese managers tend to hire fresh graduates.
As it is stated by another commenter, Americans value on experience and Chinese
value on certificates. Americans prefer employees with experience neither too
young nor too old. This can also be supported by the example in the same
comment that when young employees come in and take over, the first to go are
the order ones (beyond 50) and the completely inexperienced ones.
One of the commenter mentioned about the influence which
aging problems will bring on China IT industry in next 20 years. We believe
that this issue will affect the average age of Chinese IT employees. For example,
there will be more “old” employees in 2050 in IT industry than that in today.
But we should also consider other factors, such as new technology, changing perceptions
and new management systems. For instance, maybe in the future, more advanced
technology allows fewer people to do more tasks. There are fewer employees needed
in IT industry. So companies will lay off old employees and hire new and young
ones. In this situation, the average age of Chinese IT employees may still stay
low.
The comments also make some suggestions on improving the
blog's content. Many of them are also interested in why there is a bg
difference in the average age of employees in IBM China and Microsoft China. Maybe
we can have a deeper look into manage systems and recruitment process in IBM
China and Microsoft China and further discover the reasons behind in our future
study of international management.
References
Society
for
human resource management. (2012). Strategic Hr Management - Case
Study. Retrieved
February 22, 2012, from
http://www.shrm.org/Education/hreducation/Documents/Boudreau_IBM%20Case%20Study%20with%20Teaching%20Notes_FINAL.pdf
IBM
Global Business Services. (2012). Human Capital Management. Retrieved February
22, 2012, from http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/pdf/gbe03071-usen-talentpart1.pdf
Scribd.
(2012). Microsoft's HR Strategy - An Analysis. Retrieved February 22, 2012,
from http://www.scribd.com/doc/13286642/HR-Planning-Strategy-at-Microsoft-Inc
CRI
Online. (2012). IT Young Graduate Employment Strategy. Retrieved February 22,
2012, from http://gb.cri.cn/2201/2005/04/11/1425@511316.htm
Sina Blog.
(2012). Age of employees in IT industry. Retrieved February 22, 2012, from http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5af292480100qjbd.html
Bricklin.
(2012). The Value of Experience. Retrieved Februar 22, 2012, from http://www.bricklin.com/experiencevalue.htm