Employees and Workplace
Global Expansion
EMC serves customers in more than 100 countries, and it is important for us to be in close proximity to customers in growing markets. New pools of talent are blossoming around the world, and we are on a journey to find the best minds.
Centers of Excellence
EMC's Centers of Excellence (COEs) are the foundation of our strategy for cultivating talent and expanding our presence in key markets around the globe. We operate COEs in seven countries: China, Egypt, Ireland, India, Israel, Russia and the U.S. Our COE model drives operational, financial, and project efficiency by leveraging local talent. COEs coordinate initiatives with local university programs, government representatives and community partners for maximum impact.
Each COE leverages specific expertise and skills in their markets to advance our business strategy. The employees perform essential services for EMC business units, including engineering R&D, customer service, translation services, tech support, and back office processing. Each COE is managed locally and a cross-functional board consisting of EMC's senior executives oversees strategy and investment decisions.
One unique advantage of our COE model is that employees from different business units have more opportunities for collaboration.
Many technology companies are seeking to hire top talent in our COE locations. Our COEs work closely with University Relations, the Academic Alliance, Corporate Training, and the Innovation Network on local recruiting strategies. We continue to emphasize employee retention, and have kept attrition rates below the market average in each of our COE locations.
Managing Change
Global economic upheaval, industry consolidation, acquisitions, and restructuring have become common in the 21st century. We work hard to make any transitions resulting from these events as smooth as possible for employees in order to retain top talent and preserve relationships with employees.
Retaining top talent is one of the primary goals following any merger or acquisition. Early in the process, we create an assimilation plan to balance integration into EMC while maintaining important aspects of the acquired company's culture.
In the course of conducting normal business operations, EMC is occasionally required to reduce headcount in certain areas of the business, reallocate investments, de-emphasize less productive initiatives and focus new investments in areas of opportunity. Any of these actions can result in valued employees leaving our business involuntarily. EMC takes these actions only after thoughtful consideration and with an empathic understanding of the impact our actions can have on the lives and careers of our team members. We also work to exhaust all options before making the difficult decision to reduce the size of our workforce. This strategy increases operational efficiency, improves fiscal strength, generates goodwill and helps us to retain highly talented people.
When we are required to take the difficult action of severing employment, our mission is to assure each individual is treated with dignity, compassion, fairness, and respect. In the U.S. we offer a separation package that consists of base pay and certain benefits continuation, including medical, dental, and vision coverage. We also offer job search assistance provided by a third-party organization and paid for by EMC. Internationally, EMC severance packages vary by country and are in compliance with local laws.