Where I Belong???
Since my initial
Diary I was able to finally get some in the press to acknowledge that Bethesda based Marriott International will be outsourcing 100s of jobs.
Feel free to read the coverage
Here
Here
and
Here
More below the fold....
The company will now not be able to hide the outsourcing of these jobs till the last minute and then dump them as an afterthought. They were able to get the news to break on a Friday afternoon thus ensuring little follow up. The press also took the statements from the Marriott CEO's with absolutely nothing about the effects of this job action that I sent to them. They also got the numbers wrong. Marriott executives claim 100s of jobs in Bethesda but these jobs will be cut in Bethesda, Rockville, Frederick and Wichita Ks as well as remote agents and will be close to a thousand.
The best part of their reasoning for these job cuts is this:
“In the Information Resources area specifically, we will be contracting with companies whose core competency is IT services, which will create efficiencies for the company, our owners and franchisees.”
This sounded familiar to me and after some looking around I found out that back in April of 2010, Robert Webb, CIO of Hilton Hotels had this announcement:
"Hilton-IBM agreement brings ‘efficiencies"
"Technology giant IBM will host and manage the technology that supports Hilton brands, including data center management and monitoring, e-mail, Web hosting, and the central guest reservation system. The partnership will allow Hilton to focus more intensely on its core strengths, namely operating hotels, said Robert Webb, Hilton’s senior VP and CIO.
“We have a very complicated IT infrastructure, and technology is changing very, very rapidly,” Webb said. “And we need to continue to partner with world-class companies to upgrade and enhance technology in the countries where we have hotels.”
IBM will host Hilton’s technology infrastructure from a facility in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The transition and migration process will take place during the next 18 months"
This all sounded bold and inventive by Mr. Webb until we fast forwarded 2 years and........
"To test this theory let’s look at Memphis, TN, where IBM has recently lost two big customers. One of them — Hilton Hotels — dumped IBM only this week. The other company is ServiceMaster.
Hilton just announced they are canceling almost all of their contracts with IBM less than two years into a five-year contract. This includes global IT helpdesk, all data centers, and support of “global web” (hilton.com and all related systems).
According to my sources at Hilton, the IBM contract was a nightmare. IBM couldn’t keep Hilton’s Exchange servers running. The SAN in the Raleigh data center hasn’t worked right since it supposedly came up in January, with some SAN outages lasting more than a day. IBM couldn’t monitor Hilton’s servers in the IBM data center. Hilton had to tell IBM when the servers were running low on disk space, for example.
Now IBM is gone, replaced by Dell, and Hilton has a new CIO."
Looking at Mr. Webb's LinkedIn Page, he was at Hilton all of 2 years and 10 months. At least they had the foresight to cut their losses.
"Chief Information OfficerHilton WorldwidePrivately Held; 10,001+ employees; Hospitality industryAugust 2009 – May 2012 (2 years 10 months) McLean, VA
So what's Marriott going to do but follow the same cookie-cutter Hilton model that I pointed out in my initial diary. The kicker to all of this is that one of the vendors that Marriott has chosen is none other than .........................IBM.
My representatives in both the House and the Senate have not responded at all to repeated attempt for assistance. The media has been happy with the fact that they reported that jobs were going away and appear to have washed their hands.
What's Next??
There will come a day when the company has to provide 60 Day written Notice that they will be laying us all off. I do have an idea of what to do with all of these notices and I am hoping that my fellow Marriott Associates will join up and show how much you belong.
Mr Marriott has ALWAYS wanted something of his to go "Viral". It has been a dream brought forth by his Press Secretary, none other than Mrs. Chris Matthews. I plan to take a short video of my notification and a few other thoughts written on paper and post them as a response to Marriott's "Where I Belong" campaign.
Check It Out.
So join me, my soon to be unemployed Marriott Associates and create a fake Youtube Account if you want to stay anonymous and post a reply video with the Headline
WHERE I BELONG???????
or
WHERE I WAS OUTSOURCED!
or
WHERE I WAS EXPENDABLE.
Be sure to leave out your face and take off any rings or other identifiable items. You may want to have a friend or a stranger or even better, a guest walking in to a Marriott hotel hold your notice. Be sure to black out any names or numbers on the notices as well and be sure to wish the rest of our Associates Good Luck with all their future IT needs.
Follow
@Moutsourced
Hash Tag
#whereibelong?
and get a fake myspace account if you require anonymity and friend the new
Don't Let Marriott Outsource Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/...
I doubt we will stop anything, I just want to have a clear conscience knowing that I tried to shine a light on this failed path. Hopefully in 2 years, we will be learning about Former CIO..............
e-mail
Bruce.Hoffmeister@Marriott.com
Arne.Sorenson@Marriott.com
and let them know you will be taking your business elsewhere.