What do the concerns of managing a company’s workforce have to do with the CIO?

Abstract: As it turns out, plenty. With the technology they identify and implement to meet their business’ needs, CIOs can play a pivotal role in enabling workforces to not only be more effective and productive, but to be more capable of changing to meet their organisations’ needs.

The study

IBM’s Global Human Capital Study 2008 investigated the workforce issues challenging companies today. The study’s authors uncovered four top concerns identified by human resources (HR) executives —including one that should be of particular interest to CIOs: They concluded that developing an adaptable workforce was essential to driving growth and innovation, not to mention overcoming such significant hurdles as globalisation, competition and changing workforce demographics.

As a savvy member of the IT community, you've probably heard of the IBM Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC2™) vision before. Through presentations and literature, you've learned that the IBM UC2 strategy enables companies to flexibly implement and maintain next-generation collaboration capabilities using existing or new technology investments. Maybe you're ready to learn more, or maybe you're ready to adopt the approach... but like others, you're not quite sure where to start.
After all, the IBM UC2 strategy combines rich presence awareness, instant messaging (IM), e-mail, unified messaging and your existing telephony, Web, audio-conferencing and videoconferencing capabilities into a single, highly flexible user interface. But there's no need to feel overwhelmed. The strategy is designed to be easy to adopt, and IBM offers practically the whole gamut: the essential software - such as the IBM Lotus® Sametime® platform - hardware, services and strategic partnerships. These tools can help you implement a unified communications and collaboration strategy across an existing multivendor environment, without having to rip out and replace your equipment. So how do you get there from where you are?
IBM Global Technology Services offers a comprehensive suite of strategy-and-assessment and architecture-and-design services, as well as integration, deployment and managed services. If you already have a strategy, IBM has the proven expertise to help you implement it. If you're just getting started and want to know where to begin, IBM offers strategy and assessment services to help you establish where you are in adopting a unified communications and collaboration strategy, as well as how to resolve your unique IT challenges and achieve your business goals.