While insisting that it will not be making any compulsory redundancies, IBM Belgium has taken a proactive approach to ensure it gets as many voluntary redundancies as it wants: for employees whose career paths and ambitions don’t quite fit in with the aspirations of the division as a whole, the Brussels-based operation is going out and finding them jobs outside the company. The company stressed that under the new outplacing policy, victims will retain their jobs at IBM until a new job has been found for them. There will be no deadlines, and it will be done by mutual agreement, an IBM Belgium spokesman said, conceding that the policy could still cause disappointment among employees that persisted in the belief that their career paths were compatible with the division’s ambitions. IBM Belgium, with 2,400 employees, looks to shed 80 this year and another 80 next year.
