A little Less in the Envelope This Week หน้า 358
A decade ago, no other firm treated its employees better than IBM. Big Blue’s generous compensation packages offered medical covered that was virtually free, cushy pension, and salaries that rose dependably each years. Today those guarantees are gone.
IBM replaced these guaranteed compensation packets with more pay–for–performance plans and learner benefits. This change began in the early 1990s and became an urgently needed change during the late 1990s’ war for talent A work aholic up-and-comer at IBM in the 1990s could exceed every goal and still wind up with the same raise as the incompetent in the next office. Even worse, than 1,000 employees (in a company with 413,000 employees at the time) had stock options. In a climate that was all about risk and reward, IBM was more about security and one-size-fits-all pay.
So IBM instituted rigorous performance reviews, widened its stock options to 70,000 workers, and made an average of 10 percent of employee pay variable—meaning it could swell or shrink depending on the worker’s performance and the company’s performance. Benefits also overhauled. Recently, IBM announced a new pension plan, which saved the company millions but caused anger among employees, many of whom complained of losing as much as half of their benefits Health coverage cost employees as much as $157 a month. Says 37-year-old IBM engineer Jeff Zitz, who estimates his pension under the new plan could take as much as an 80percent hit: ‘’Halfway through my career, they changed the deal. ‘’
Now, blue-collar and white-collar employees across Corporate America are realizing just how much their deals have changed, too. Nowhere is the shift in risk more painfully obvious, to those affected as well as those who fear being affected in the same way, than at Enron Corp., where employees saw their retirement saving wiped out while executives at the top cashed in. But you don’t have to work at a company that’s bankrupt and under siege by federal investigators to feel at least some of the pain. In 2003, for example, many workers at companies as diverse as Ford Motor Company and Texas Instruments Inc. won’t see a penny in bonuses something that during the boom was a slam-dunk, swelling pay by 10 percent to 70percent. At Lockheed Martin Corp., employees have been squeezed to pay more of the soaring health-care costs: For some, the employee portion premiums has tripled in the past seven year. Co-pays on doctor visits and prescription drugs have doubled. Robert M. Handshuh, a 45-year-old Lockheed Martin project manager, says his 2 percent raises won’t begin to offset the spike in his portion my own in the last two years,’’ he says.