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00:00We went from like a sprint to a marathon with working from home . Where are we now. Oh I think we're still in the marathon . It's probably more like an Ironman . We're still in the swimming phase . So if that's the case I mean you're talking to your employees . Do they like it. Do they want to keep working from home. How do you balance what they need with what IBM needs. Yeah well look we actually wanted to hear from our own employees and help them you know work with them to quote create what we do next . And so we did a three day jam just to get their views. And what came through really clearly was employees missed the social interaction. They feel a little isolated. They also miss those serendipitous encounters because those are the ones that often you know lead to innovation and just a new way of looking at things. We tend to be a little more transactional a little more scheduled when we're on video and so forth. And so. So they missed that part and they missed the energy that you know electricity that you get in the room that just gives you energy every day. So so those are the things that they said they missed. But for sure there were also things they liked about being at home. Now commutes for example. And. And Don just not having not having to do the commute was the biggest part I guess. So I guess the question becomes you know when you geared towards performance reviews for example a common criticism is that if you work at home you're not as productive . How do you do that at IBM. I mean you set different criteria . Are there different metrics now that you have to measure up to . Yeah. You know we've always had a certain percentage of our people working from home about 40 45 percent actually in the US as an example. So we we've been doing this for a while but it's really important that leaders measure outcomes not not you know measuring by you know walking around. And so for I think that's a big shift. You know it's a shift into the future that's really accelerated in that leaders need to be more like future oriented leaders measure outcomes not inputs. So would you anticipate an IBM scaling back your physical space then . You know we've always we've always been in the process of doing that. We acquired a lot of spaces with acquisitions and so forth. So this is just a continuation of that. But for sure we're thinking about the office as a different thing now that everyone has experience and loved parts of working at home. We realized that we need to actually have an office as a destination for certain things not just a place to go and get your work done because we all know you can get that done at home . So. So making it a place where people want to come for certain activities certain team building activities certain teams branch things like that. That's interesting. Have you also used analytics to measure your employees sort of their mental health and work state. Because something we all know working from home it's very difficult to have the on and off switch. Yes. In fact we do a lot of work with that not the analytic side. Obviously we have a lot of mental health opportunities for them but we're not sort of you know watching and snooping on them or anything like that. But it is really important that the managers check in with their people make sure they are switching off. And we have check ins at least once a week with each one on one between the manager and the employee just to make sure that that happens. How do you hold people accountable if they're not doing that or if they're not making the same kind of goals that they should . If the if the manager isn't doing it or if the employee isn't doing it right and understand more like the manager I think like it because it does come on the manager to have to check in with the employees. Right. So where's the accountability there . Well we survey the employees and we ask the employees how they're doing whether they're getting the support that they need from their managers and so forth. We're doing that on a regular basis. I'm pleased to say that we're in the 90 percent in terms of the employee saying they're getting the support they need from their managers. But we also ask about their mental health whether you know how they're doing. We're you know we're in the 70s it dropped a little bit as we went through the George Floyd crisis as an example. So you know so it's had its bumps. But but we're monitoring that really carefully and looking to see where we've got hot spots that we need to go in and do some interventions. There's also the question of as you mentioned in a the people interaction and that's how you generate a lot of ideas. Is there anything that IBM is doing to kind of recreate that digitally in some capacity . Well look there's fabulous virtual collaboration tools. I don't want to undermine those. And we have trained all our people on it and certainly at the very top. By the way even our top leadership are using brainstorming tools and things like that . So that's you know that's all that's all good. And it's if the alternative is social distancing and masks it's a lot easier to do a whiteboard virtually than it is in a room. Right. So. So that's the that's the situation that we're in. So but it's just still not quite the same. Right. And I think the other thing is as time goes on you realize that your network that you left the office with is going to change. You've got new people joining you people joining the team. And and so that bankers trust that you built up over time starts to dissipate and you need to build new bonds. And it's just harder to do virtually and to do really great teamwork and really great collaboration. Trust is important as I think Stephen Covey said . You know there's this thing called the speed of trust. You do things more quickly when you have a very highly trusting team .

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Work From Home: How IBM Balances Business, Employee Needs

IBM Chief Human Resources Officer Diane Gherson discusses the shift toward working from home, evaluating worker productivity, and making offices a “destination” for work. She speaks with Bloomberg’s Alix Steel on "Bloomberg Markets: European Close." (Source: Bloomberg)

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