Why IBM sends its best employees abroad for four weeks
The computer giant’s ‘Corporate Service Corps’ programme has cost it US$70 million, but it insists it ‘yields greater returns’
By Ruth Umoh
Suspending a company’s most productive employees from their day jobs and sending them to the developing world for a month may not seem like the best use of their time. But IBM does exactly that.
Why? Because the company believes that sending its top talents on these pro-bono assignments helps them develop leadership and problem-solving skills, work more collaboratively, strengthens company loyalty and entices millennials to join the company.
“After [the programme] people go back to work with a much more robust view of the world and IBM,” Jennifer Ryan Crozier, president of IBM’s Foundation, tells CNBC Make It .
The highly competitive IBM Corporate Service Corps programme, which began in 2008, receives almost 5,000 applicants per year but accepts only 10 per cent of the top IBM performers. By the end of this year, the company will have deployed 3,500 of its best workers to nearly 40 countries.
The value for the team’s work while they’re away costs IBM US$400,000 per deployment and has exceeded US$70 million to date, according to a company spokesman.