New hires of less than a year are generally non-touchable on an RA. Only time a new hire of less than a year can be RA'ed is if an entire team is being RA'ed. Came directly from an executive when questioned after the last RA.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but IBM has to RA a certain number of younger employees - usually those who are new to the company - in each round to avoid providing the basis for an age discrimination suit. That's why I don't think this can be right, quite the opposite.
The Original post is mixing terms here. New employee/new hire vs. Younger employees. I had a new employee/new hire RAed on my team about 1 year into the role - he was a new hire but not young. I was younger than him and I had 20 years under my belt at IBM. Need to be specific new hire or younger employee- they don’t always mean the same especially coming in at a higher band level.
I can confirm as a exmanager, new hires and interns were untouchable in all of my RA's. It was really wrong how we had to define role redundancy actions, and the SME was eligible for the list. While the new hire who was incapable of doing the job was not eligible. RA's can also be location or country based as well as age. RA the SME's in the USA, but the "early professional hire" folks in EU are untouchable. EPH is the word smithing used to get out of hot water for age discrimination previously calling them college hires. the word college hire is age discrimination, but early professional legally can mean someone who's retired from the military at 45, and just started a tech job at IBM.
Both are targeted (family leave and medical insurance)...the key to understanding this part is to realize that like many large corporations, IBM is self-insured. That means that instead of an insurance company taking the financial risk (and paying out claims), IBM assumes the risk and financial responsibility. The "insurance companies" are merely benefit managers...they handle all the paperwork and bureaucracy, but IBM pays out on all the claims. So just like an insurance company has to manage their pool of insured customers, IBM has to manage its pool of insured employees. TLDR...if an employee is claiming "too much" in benefits relative to the insured pool (all the other employees in the company), then that employee stands out and gets another ticky mark towards an RA. Family and medical leave (FMLA)? Serious illness (e.g. cancer)? Pregnancy? It all draws attention.
Various government regulations permit what "can" and "can not" be done, but if you cost too much in benefits then rest assured that the company will find a way to fire your a**.
Do they target people using health insurance or who used fmla for benefits claimed?
When I was with IBM, there were no explicit exceptions for new hires. HOWEVER...it was understood among the management that the usual metrics for RA qualification (PBC, time in band, benefits claimed (e.g. sick time), stuff like that) were either very misleading or utterly meaningless with respect to newly hired employees. The "entire team being RA'd" bit is (or was, in my case) misleading...if the entire team was RA'd, then that team's business function was eliminated or reduced for some reason and so they just decided to get rid of everyone involved en masse. Personally, I never saw it happen.
The amount of nepotism I've witnessed in IBM is completely disgusting. Also, why is the ratio of IC's to managers so low? This company is stacked with do-nothing management. For any given day, I will have half a dozen people tell me what to do. We need more doers!
101% true and that Executive made that statement as part of the process to cover their butt$ That statement is only relevant to those who came in through nepotistic channels The rest are cannon fodder It's the oldest play in the IBM HR playbook If there was a way to track the younger aged layoffs and their relationship to existing IBMers there would be a direct correlation beyond a doubt