Ostschweizer Personaltag 2020 on people and machines: Corona accelerated it
The 16th East Switzerland HR Day on September 24, 2020, took place in front of somewhat thinned-out rows, but could nevertheless be called a success. With a view to the topic "HR 4.0: People and machines - intelligent and digital", renowned speakers showed how the Corona crisis is accelerating digitalization in the business world - and what this means for the future.
Digitization has made significant progress in the world of work. Abdullah Redzepi, lecturer at the OST - Ostschweizer Fachhochschule (University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland) and member of the advisory board of the HR Day, also underlined this in his welcoming speech. In the future, machines, technologies and artificial intelligence will be able to take over more and more activities that have so far been performed by humans. According to Redzepi, HR must accompany this transformation and become the driving force of the new working relationship between people and machines.
People and machines: Implications for the professional world
The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of SAP Switzerland, René Fitterer, showed that the architecture of digital transformation is efficient and desirable. The speed of change has increased dramatically, he said, and robots are being developed everywhere to replace human labor. Thus, according to Fitterer, by 2025, about 60% of our activities will be automated, and 1.5 million jobs will be lost. At the same time, however, digitization will create an equal number of new jobs. Two-thirds of today's children would then be working in a profession that does not exist today. These changes would have to be accompanied by investments in further training. At SAP, an increase in training costs of 1% would improve earnings by 50 to 60 million euros.
Originality and new learning strategies
The author Jannike Stöhr explained how organizations and thus the working world are changing due to globalization, the new role of women, demographic change and other megatrends. The world of work is moving from a hierarchical organization to a network organization. This will be driven above all by ideas, originality and new learning strategies. To achieve this, employees must learn to deal with the networked world and to collaborate. Employees should be supported with career guidance and self-discovery, with a focus on individual strengths and talents, and with the promotion of learning as a team. But space for intrinsic and self-organized training and learning by doing would also have to be encouraged.
Practitioners for the promotion of learning
In the discussion, prudently led by moderator Matthias Wipf, the practitioner among the participants, Byörn Mattle, Head of HR & Academy at Jansen AG in Oberriet, confirmed that the challenges are great and that the promotion of learning, which Jansen AG is strongly committed to, is particularly important. The greatest challenge, he says, is to manage the balancing act between man and machine. Jansen AG is trying to automate all activities that are less prone to error and thus create more time for the appreciative activities of the employees. The participants in the discussion emphasized that active listening is very important in today's organization. Employee discussions should be worked out in the company and measures derived from them.
What humans and machines don't have in common: Screwing up ...
With a unique combination of seriousness and humor, the two consultants and cabaret artists Stefan Stahl and Marco Zbinden address topics that no one wants to get their fingers burned on. According to them, the future-oriented company should stand on two pillars, namely technology and creativity. The USP of humans is "screwing up," which artificial intelligence cannot do. Human failure is unrivaled, but creativity emerges from "messing up. We should give chance a chance and see what comes out of it.
Recruiting in challenging times
The labor market, as the conference showed, has increasingly developed into an employee market in recent years. Recruiters and companies, according to Frank Rechsteiner, author, in the concluding presentation, must therefore use new methods to recruit personnel. In addition to new ideas in addressing candidates and in employer branding, it is above all important to develop a new mindset for recruiting in the future. Rechsteiner highlighted important points such as active sourcing, recruiting 4.0, content recruiting and influencer recruiting.
In addition to HR managers, business managers are also being called upon to radically rethink recruitment. Instead of continuing to produce stereotypical job advertisements, the specialist departments would have to work together with HR managers to develop job content and unique selling points with which their companies can score points as employers. To this end, the goals of the teams in which vacancies are to be filled must also be defined and linked to company-specific elements such as vision and mission statement, Rechsteiner said.
