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Tuesday, September 27, 2005
IBM helping fill void of retiring workers
As employees age, companies aim to do more with less
IBM Corp. is developing products that will allow companies to replace retiring workers with computers, helping them limit the effect of an aging work force.
IBM's services and software specifically will help employers fill the void left by retiring employees, said James Courtada, the author of a report on the aging work force by Armonk, N.Y.-based International Business Machines.
The company is targeting governments that are often the biggest employees. In France, Europe's third-largest economy, 50 percent of state employees are expected to retire within the next 10 years, IBM's report says. Americans aged 65 and over rose tenfold last century and will surge after 2011 as the baby-boomer generation grows older, according to the Census Bureau.
"You can displace human activity with technologies to a certain point," Courtada said last week. "As the population leaves the work force, the work that remains to be done is still there. Processes or programs have to change in the absence of being able to replace all those people."
IBM will provide hardware and software as well as services, including redesigning information technology systems, working methods and data management, to increase efficiency and better handle the workplace knowledge.
The report on the aging work force was carried out by IBM's Institute of Business Value.
The group, which employs 60 full-time researchers in Amsterdam, Netherlands; Cambridge, Mass.; and Beijing, is funded by IBM's Business Consulting Services unit, which is part of the company's Global Services business.
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