Siemens focusing on adapting to the ‘future of work’

19th April 2019

By: Natasha Odendaal

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

     

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Changing the face of the workplace has become an ever-increasing requirement for companies aiming to fully leverage the productivity of its workforce; however, the biggest challenge hindering the transformation is the unprecedented pace of change.

The world is evolving at an unprecedented pace, and companies have no choice but to keep pace with societal and technological change amid trends such as Big Data, artificial intelligence (AI), the cloud, blockchain and the so-called gig economy, says Siemens chief human resources officer and director Janina Kugel.

The enormous speed of the current industrial revolution, fuelled by digitalisation, is leaving the old school standardised processes, guided by checklists, key performance indicators, controls and checkpoints, in its wake.

The digital transformation is becoming one of the greatest challenges facing organisations today.

The challenges of the world can no longer be tackled by following standardised processes, as the changes are taking place too fast, leading to volatility and ambiguity, she tells Engineering News.

The digital future offers great potential, but there is a need for the right approach to shape the digital transformation to the benefit of everyone.

“After all, ultimately, digitalisation is not about technology. It is about people.”

However, the world is becoming ever more complex on a different level, where the mechanical world and the digital world now need to be connected, and consideration given to how the enormous amount of data can be analysed, collated and leveraged effectively.

New, fundamentally changed business models are emerging out of the fact that there are extensive data points and processing capacity on an unprecedented scale in an era where global power relationships are shifting and entire markets are disappearing.

“All this poses a huge challenge. What will my company look like? What will my job look like in the future? What competences will be needed going forward? And do I have the skills to keep up?”

Perfect Storm

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) ‘Future of Jobs Report 2018’ indicates that the Fourth Industrial Revolution has created a perfect storm of business model change in all industries, resulting in major disruptions to labour markets, with new categories of jobs emerging, partly or wholly displacing others.

“The skill sets required in both old and new occupations will change in most industries and transform how and where people work,” the report highlights.

“Unless you retire within the next 12 months, you cannot be sure that whatever skills you have today will be sufficient to the end of your career,” Kugel warns, noting that the future of work is closely linked to the future of learning.

“The inherent opportunities for economic prosperity, societal progress and individual flourishing in this new world of work are enormous, yet depend crucially on the ability of all concerned stakeholders to instigate reform in education and training systems, labour market policies, business approaches to developing skills, employment arrangements and existing social contracts,” WEF founder and executive chairperson Klaus Schwab says.

“We cannot change the speed – we need to adapt to it. So, companies need to be agile, flexible and self-organised,” Kugel says, noting that an entirely new ecosystem is emerging, where companies and leaders will be required to question the old and the new and consider how the world will work, communicate and interact.

There will be a need to start breaking down the habit of thinking and acting in silos and start maintaining a global network and an ecosystem of exchanging ideas, as well as flattening hierarchies in favour of more coaching- and accountability-focused roles.

There will also be a need to develop an agile and flexible environment in which employees are able to take more ownership and responsibility for their work, along with the culture of lifelong learning and continuous upskilling.

While it is expected that increased demand for new roles will offset the decreasing demand for others, this will entail difficult transitions for millions of workers and the need for proactive investment in developing a new surge of agile learners and skilled talent globally, says Schwab.

“To prevent an undesirable lose-lose scenario – technological change accompanied by talent shortages, mass unemployment and growing inequality – it is critical that businesses take an active role in supporting their existing workforces through reskilling and upskilling, that individuals take a proactive approach to their own lifelong learning and that governments create an enabling environment, rapidly and creatively, to assist in these efforts,” he asserts.

In the digital age, soft skills, including social and negotiation skills, persuasive power and empathy, are becoming more important than ever, while new technologies and new knowledge arise in ever shorter cycles that require a workforce to continually upgrade their skills to keep up with the rapid pace of change, adds Kugel.

The recent International Labour Organisation report, ‘Work for a brighter future: Global commission on the future of work’, proposes a human-centred agenda for the future of work that strengthens the social contract by placing people and the work they do at the centre of economic and social policy and business practice.

“First, it means investing in people’s capabilities, enabling them to acquire skills, reskill and upskill, and supporting them through the various transitions they will face over their life course. Second, investing in the institutions of work to ensure a future of work with freedom, dignity, economic security and equality.”

Finally, the report recommends investing in decent and sustainable work and shaping rules and incentives so as to align economic and social policy and business practice.

Meanwhile, continuing education remains a top priority at Siemens, with the company investing more than €500-million a year in the training and continuing education of its workforce globally.

“We must aim to provide professional training for as many young people as possible. At the same time, the young generation must realise that vocational training is now just the first step into a career and that you must still keep on continually upgrading your skills. Learning is becoming a lifelong task.”

The human resources functions within large organisations will need to start playing a different and more strategic role in guiding organisations and leaders through the digital transformation, leveraging AI-led performance measurement and the obtained data to red-flag any potential concerns for review and management before it becomes a challenge.

“Human resources operations, especially in larger companies, have typically been organised hierarchically, providing one-size-fits-all solutions developed at headquarters and measuring success in terms of how well processes have been implemented. Up until three years ago, Siemens human resources was also organised in this way,” she says.

However, a future-orientated human resources function embraces, evaluates and uses the opportunities Big Data and new technologies like AI and the cloud provide.

Siemens itself developed a more customised human resources operating model that leverages technology and data points to manage its diverse, 380 000-strong workforce.

Automation technologies – including AI and robotics – will change jobs but not destroy them all and, if the algorithms are coded well, in a way that does not amplify or reflect human bias, AI can support jobs.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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