HRM Training Program to Address Performance Gaps at IBM GBS Unit

This report addresses the performance gap within IBM's Global Business Services (GBS) due to factors like hierarchical structure, employee inefficiency, and lack of updated technological knowledge. It proposes a comprehensive training program to enhance employee skills, focusing on both technical and management aspects. The training program includes needs identification and assessment, clear objectives, a well-structured design, and development using senior members, the Learning and Knowledge Department, and external experts. The training methods involve presentations, lectures, video-based learning, and case studies. The goal is to equip employees with the necessary skills to address weaknesses, boost confidence, and provide maximum value to clients, ultimately leading to improved performance and revenue for IBM GBS. The report also emphasizes the importance of rigorous evaluation through on-the-spot exams and performance appraisals to ensure the training's effectiveness.

Running head: HRM
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Student’s name
Name of the Institute

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Introduction
IBM is multinational technology company. It is one of the renowned Companies. It is also
categorized as big blue. IBM markets and manufactures computer hardware, middleware and
software. It also provides consulting services. IBM’s (International Business Machines) Global
Business Services is unit which deals with providing software services to clients (DaSilva &
Trkman, 2014).
Performance Gap
GBS is facing revenue fall in the second quarter of year 2017. From past many years GBS is
suffering a lot. GBS understand the clients’ requirement and provides technology and maintains
it as well. The performance of GBS hit because there is long hierarchy, employees are not
efficient, and unaware of updated technology. Technical employs lack management skills.
Training Program
The training program for employees can be designed and delivered in the following ways
(Pollock & Wick, 2015):
Identify the need: Employees need to be efficient, know updated technology, good
communication skills, brings out innovation, meet deadlines etc. They should be trained with all
these requirements (Brewster, 2017).
Assess the need: Already IBM has 40 hours of mandatory online training for employees. It also
conducts classroom trainings for compliance, security etc. This particular training for

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performance assistance should be mandatory for all bands of employees. It should conduct every
week. It should be instructor led training
Training Objectives:
 Along with technical, also enhance management skills of employees.
 Address key issues faced by employees through open discussions and suggestions.
 Educate employees about performance indicators and overall aspect of business.
Design: The overall training would be conducted by senior members from the account. The
syllabus of training will be delivered to them by Learning and Knowledge Department. External
experts would be part of training to assess the effectiveness. The sessions will be conducted in
meeting rooms. At max 30 employees can be part of training in 1 classroom. The medium of
training would be presentations, lectures, video based and case studies. The study material is
confidential intellectual property of IBM.
Develop the training: The trainer may use any media, but he needs to cover introduction,
objectives, analysis, competitive advantages, strategies and evaluation aspect of the training. The
duration of the training would be from 1.5 hours to 2 hours. Facility department needs to make
sure that necessary equipment is working properly.
Reducing Performance Gap
The training will help employees to work on the weak areas. This will help in boosting
their confidence and provide maximum value to the clients. Also employees will feel
empowered. Their opinions would be shared to senior management and good ideas may become
part of the overall IBM’s policies (Taigman & Wolf, 2014).

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Evaluation of training
The trainings should be evaluated rigorously (Ahearn & Weatherly, 2015). On spot exam
(objective) will be conducted. The exam will be evaluated or become part of performance
appraisal of employees. Employees are expected to attend one such session every month. Their
job performance will be measured by the managers post training. Also, similar modules would be
shared to them online. The employees are supposed to complete 2 hours modules along with the
training.

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References:
Ahearn, W. H., Green, G., Riordan, M. M., & Weatherly, N. L. (2015). Evaluating the Quality of
Behavior Analytic Practitioner Training Programs. Behavior analysis in practice, 8(2),
149-151.
Brewster, C. (2017). The integration of human resource management and corporate strategy.
In Policy and practice in European human resource management (pp. 22-35). Routledge.
DaSilva, C. M., & Trkman, P. (2014). Business model: What it is and what it is not. Long range
planning, 47(6), 379-389.
Pollock, R. V., Jefferson, A., & Wick, C. W. (2015). The six disciplines of breakthrough learning:
How to turn training and development into business results. John Wiley & Sons.
Taigman, Y., Yang, M., Ranzato, M. A., & Wolf, L. (2014). Deepface: Closing the gap to human-
level performance in face verification. In Proceedings of the IEEE conference on
computer vision and pattern recognition (pp. 1701-1708)