600 participants from five continents got together on the initiative of the Kiel Institute for World Economy for the Global Economic Symposium (GES) to discuss potential solutions to a wide range of global problems.
600 participants from five continents got together on the initiative of the Kiel Institute for World Economy for the Global Economic Symposium (GES) to discuss potential solutions to a wide range of global problems. In Kiel, Chief Human Resources Officer Marion Schick spoke with experts about the challenge of four generation management in companies. High-ranking politicians representatives such as Mehmet Şimşek, Turkish finance ministerand Non Government Organizations as investment legend George Soros, Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari and economic experts from around the world were among the guests in Kiel. Needless to say, the euro crisis was one of the central topics being discussed in several groups. Other urgent problems included developments in the Arab countries, the future energy mix, cyber security, the global wealth gap and demographic change
Demography as a chance Telekom's Chief Human Resources Officer Marion Schick spoke with high-ranking experts about the challenge of four generation management in companies. When the baby boomer generation, born between 1956 and 1965, retires in 2020, this, combined with those already in retirement, will mean the loss of around 50 years of professional experience. At the same time, those born after 1992 face completely new professional challenges and have totally different expectations of their employers. On the whole, large companies such as Deutsche Telekom now have to manage the challenges of four generations in their ranks who often have very different backgrounds, values and educations.
Together with Yves Leterme (Deputy Secretary General of the OECD and former Belgian Prime Minister), Sita Mazumder (Coutts & Co, Switzerland) and Michael Geke (KPMG), Marion Schick was convinced that how we live, work and learn will change dramatically in the coming decades due to demographic change. At the same time, she stressed that it was important to view this change as an opportunity rather than a threat. "Old school approaches for generation clusters and isolated concepts for the respective age groups will lead us nowhere," said Schick in the podium discussion. "In society and in the Telekom workforce, there is more diversity than merely different age groups." She sees one promising approach in a changed corporate culture and modern leadership methods, supported by a lifelong learning concept aligned with different phases of life.