Sign of the times:
An IBM executive says the company is considering a plan that would reduce the company’s full-time head count by 299,000 jobs – to 100,000 – by 2017.
Source: Personnel Today magazine.
They call it 'crowd sourcing:'
From the article:
http://www.personneltoday.com/...
Multinational firms saddled with huge people costs are considering downsizing their permanent workforce and hiring sub-contractors on a scale never seen before - presenting an "enormous" management task for HR.
IT giant IBM told Personnel Today that the firm's global workforce of 399,000 permanent employees could reduce to 100,000 by 2017, the date by which the firm is due to complete its HR transformation programme.
What is Crowd Sourcing:
Crowd sourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by an employee and outsoucring it to an undefined group of people on a project-by-project basis, in the form of an open call.
Firms wishing to follow this model could encourage employees to set up a company with 10 or more colleagues, and buy back their services as and when needed.
Note that this totally removes the employee 'burden rate' aspect as well as the issue of workplace equipment (hardware, softweare) and places it on the employee or group of employees who decide to form a company to bid for the work.
It's the ultimate outsourcing idea for software, hardware, and some service jobs: make the employee invest in what is needed to bid for a contract, rather than the company. Everyone becomes a subcontractor.
Discuss.