Christian Illek, Member of the Deutsche Telekom Board of Management responsible for Human Resources, is looking for answers to the digital transformation in the world of work, including by conducting experiments in the company.
The good news: Germans are positive about digitization. 75% of people think it has more advantages than disadvantages for our country, 63% even expect advantages for themselves personally. These are the results of a recent survey by the polling institute dimap. The bad news: According to the "Zukunftsmonitor" (Monitor of the Future) from Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMF), in 2016 42% of people still expected new technologies to cause "negative changes in the world of work" of 2030. At the same time, 67% anticipate that our understanding of work will be fundamentally altered. The high speed of innovation from digitization throws up many challenges: business models are shifting or disappearing altogether as markets evolve and new ones appear. And it is also true that companies' ability to adapt quickly depends on increasing employee flexibility at the same time. For office and factory workers that means: They need to have the ability to cope with the transformation on the labor market.
It is down to employers and employee representatives to explain the opportunities of Work 4.0 so employees can take a positive stance. But that requires an appropriate environment. Cooperation instead of confrontation should be the order of the day. Because that is what new work is about.
But we shouldn't kid ourselves. No one knows what tomorrow's world of work will look like exactly. We know that people and machines will work together more and more closely in the future and that we will be able to do our jobs anywhere at any time. But, at this stage, we can only guess what obstacles we will have to overcome, what will and won't work.
That is why I am advocating for us to try things out: Beyond our daily organizational and operational requirements, we must create space in the company for experimentation, to probe the possibilities of the changing world of work. By doing this we can build a culture of learning and trial and error. It will be liberating and allow decisions to be taken more quickly with better results.
At Deutsche Telekom we are always on the look out for the best way to topple the silos in the company that are holding us back. That is why we are using the Design Thinkings method so widely. We have created LevelUP!, a digital learning platform for managers, and will be experimenting with cross-departmental models for cooperation. Why shouldn't employees invest part of their abilities and skills in projects not directly related to their role. We're going to try it out. But unlike Google's "20% rule", our employees won't be spending their time locked away in little rooms working on their own pet projects. Instead, you'll be working in teams on highly promising Group initiatives. The advantages of this focused approach are evident: Employees' talents will be more visible within the company, we will fully utilize in-house expertise, reducing outsourcing costs, and will hopefully reach our goals more quickly. We'll soon see if the bet pays off.
Despite the skepticism voiced by "Zukunftsmonitor" respondents, even they recognize the positive side of digitization for the world of work: More than half believe digitization will make it easier to reconcile work and family, and 60% think the future will include more flexibility to choose where you work, whether at home, in the office or at a co-working space.
Technological progress cannot be stopped. But it can be guided. The way digitization is reshaping our world will lead to social innovations. Including at work. We have drawn up a position paper (LINK) for Deutsche Telekom with our ideas about how to guide these changes. I also discussed solutions for the digital transformation with colleagues from other companies in Acatech (Deutsche Akademie der Technikwissenschaften) HR circles. Our take on it was that flexibility will become the "new normal". As part of a responsible corporate culture, it will give us the key to a successful digital transformation of work.
