Companies with greater gender diversity in leadership positions and that also employ more women in high-paying, high-revenue positions create more positive employee experiences. This is shown in a recently published analysis by Towers Watson. Companies with leadership structures that support diversity (e.g., with a chief diversity officer) are perceived by employees as more inclusive, the study found. "Companies that show a strong commitment to inclusion see a payoff across the entire organization," Krisztina Csedő, head of Talents & Rewards at Willis Towers Watson in Switzerland, commented on the finding. "In the current challenging environment, gender diversity in leadership positions can help companies provide employees with the much-needed experience of trust, support and the ability to have a voice."

Switzerland has some catching up to do in terms of gender diversity

The study by Willis Towers Watson shows that Switzerland still has some catching up to do in terms of gender diversity. Women are still overrepresented in various areas, such as business support positions. These include, for example, administrative services, HR services or corporate communication. They are underrepresented at executive and manager level, as well as in sales and technical support. This trend is particularly visible in high-tech companies or those in the financial sector.

"We are currently conducting a large number of pay equity analyses. In addition, there is an urgent need to review HR processes to eliminate systematic biases against women," says Krisztina Csedő. "For example, women who are hired at a lower salary than men with the same qualifications have great difficulty making up for this difference later."

Visible industry differences

A certain variation in gender distribution by function and by sector can also be seen. While administrative services, HR or communications departments employ a large proportion of women in all industries, marketing in the high-tech sector, data science in the FS sector or finance positions in both the high-tech and FS sectors have an even lower proportion of women than the typical - already low - proportion in other industries.

Gender diversity promotes career development

Among the main findings of the global analysis, which also apply to Switzerland:

• Companies with more women in leadership and management positions have more positive employee experiences in terms of overall career development, fair pay, skill building, trust in leaders, and management support. Employees in these organizations also express higher levels of engagement and a greater likelihood of staying. The benefits are particularly evident when there are at least one-third women in management and one-fifth in executive ranks. For example, companies with at least one-fifth women in management perform 12 percentage points better on a measure of career development than companies with fewer women in management (73% positive versus 61% positive). Similarly, companies with at least one-fifth women in leadership positions perform 10 percentage points better on measures of fair pay (62% vs. 52%) and likelihood of retention (71% vs. 61%).

• Companies with a higher percentage of women among the highest-paid employees (top 10 %) have more employees who feel they are part of an innovative, market-leading organization and also have a voice. These companies are more likely to offer women's health and wellness programs and pursue retention of female customers, which is further evidence of the company's commitment to how employees experience the company.

• Companies that promote more women generate more positive employee experiences in terms of workplace fit, confidence in leaders, and overall support for inclusion. In addition, these companies typically offer financial literacy and leadership development programs for women.

• Companies with diversity-focused leaders, such as chief diversity officers, and action plans for women in leadership are viewed by employees as more effective in creating an inclusive work environment that also gives employees a better understanding of their goals and job roles. Companies with a CDO or equivalent leader have an 11 percentage point advantage in inclusion (84% positive vs. 73% positive) over companies without this role.

Source: Towers Watson

He will not come after all: Edward Snowden, probably the most famous whistleblower in the world, will not come after all. as originally announced will take part in the Swiss Cyber Security Days (SCSD) as a special guest. The organizing committee has decided against the digital appearance of the American whistleblower, as it said in a media release on February 26, 2021. After Edward Snowden had already appeared virtually as a speaker at ETH in January 2020, the organizers of the Swiss Cyber Security Days 2021 were pleased about his promise to appear virtually as a speaker. Now, however, he has withdrawn: The participants and the environment of the Swiss Cyber Security Days would, however, be fundamentally different from that of ETH. After a second critical analysis, this led to the decision to forego Edward Snowden's undoubtedly attractive appearance.

Despite all this, the Swiss Cyber Security Days can boast a rich program. The event will take place purely virtually on March 10 and 11, 2021. As the Swiss platform for cyber security, it has set itself the goal of presenting essential topics that signify the relevant challenges in the field of cyber in our society. The focus is on politics, business, education and research.

Swiss Cyber Security Days

Bank Valiant and insurer Vaudoise launched a mortgage cooperation on March 2, 2021. The insurer Vaudoise will continue to advise its customers on all matters relating to the financing of residential properties and would like to meet the expectations of its customers in the mortgage sector even better, according to a corresponding media release. In the future, the insurance company will refer more complex financing directly to the financial services provider Valiant and its specialists. According to the two companies, this is intended to create an improved customer experience. It should also work well culturally: Due to their size, corporate culture and also geographically, the two service providers would complement each other well, the announcement continues. The promise is a solid partnership in the service of customer satisfaction.

Valiant and Vaudoise: Complementary offer

Vaudoise - which is one of the ten largest private insurers in Switzerland and was founded in 1895 - is supplementing its own existing mortgage offering with this collaboration. SMEs and private customers will now have a wider choice for mortgage financing for their businesses and projects. "The collaboration with Valiant gives us the opportunity to offer our clients comprehensive mortgage solutions," says Jean-Daniel Laffely, CEO of Vaudoise Insurance and head of over 1,650 employees, including 100 apprentices and people in training. The insurance company has cooperative roots and passes on part of its profits to its customers in the form of premium refunds. In 2020, this amounted to 34 million Swiss francs.

Cooperation promises greater business volume

On the other hand, Valiant gains a new partnership and can increase its business volume thanks to Vaudoise's well-developed distribution capabilities. "I am looking forward to the cooperation with Vaudoise, which is a very good fit for Valiant," says Ewald Burgener, CEO of Valiant. "The fact that Vaudoise and Valiant are leveraging synergies gives us additional options for further development."

The independent financial services provider Valiant serves clients exclusively in Switzerland and is locally anchored at 97 locations in 13 cantons. The balance sheet total amounts to CHF 33.2 billion. The bank employs over 1,000 people, including 80 trainees.

Source and further information: Valiant / Vaudoise

I recently conducted a survey on leadership among my clients and readers and was positively taken with the number and quality of responses. The question was: "What is your biggest frustration in leadership right now? In other words: What is causing you the most problems, and that's independent of the current challenges because of Corona, physical separation, etc.?" One of the points that runs like a thread through the responses is: people's unwillingness to change.

Willingness to change: an old theme

The subject is as old as mankind itself: Those who want to change something struggle against the persistence of the masses. You could also say: This is precisely why we need leaders.

But here comes the unpleasant truth: If you're a manager complaining about your team's unwillingness to change, you haven't done your homework.

The good news is that this can be changed. There are mechanisms for systematically increasing the willingness to change within a team and a company.

Create hunger for change with three steps

Here are three fundamental steps for doing so (that most don't think about enough):

1. Foundations: Many leaders lack a comprehensive understanding of why people change and why they do not. And more importantly, how they can (and cannot) influence others' willingness to change. The first thing you need is a solid foundation in psychology. You can and must acquire this as a leader if you want to increase the willingness to change in others.
2. Self-leadership: It is also interesting to ask how willing you are to change. Because change involves letting go of habits and taking new risks. Scrapping rules and trusting people. In other words, do you lead yourself with a high willingness to change and take risks? Or are you yourself more likely to follow well-worn paths?
3. Team Leadership: The third step is to use strategies and tactics to persuade others (and also to select the right people for the team). This includes things like an emotionally compelling vision, confidence in taking the first steps, recognition of even small successes, and more. Importantly, this third step cannot occur without the first two.

If you apply these three points consistently, you can massively increase your people's willingness to change. Otherwise, it will be difficult. And: this has absolutely nothing to do with home office and Corona.

To the author:
Volkmar Völzke is a success maximizer. Book author. Consultant. Coach. Speaker. www.volkmarvoelzke.ch

We never wanted to become a virtual family business. But with the shutdown, we became one more quickly and more extensively than the family, shareholders and management could ever have imagined. However, we never came close to Goldman Sachs' 98% "home office" quota in April 2020.

Most of our "homeworkers" were positively surprised. Again and again we heard in 2020: "It works much better than we expected". Also from the managers. The trust they had placed in their employees was not disappointed. On the contrary. Working productively, flexibly and agilely with colleagues or our partners and customers from home or another location has therefore also become an absolute matter of course today - more than a year later. In most areas. We do not want to and will not scale this back or call it into question again. Here, the crisis has also helped us to bring our traditional management and working methods up to date.

Caution "System Confusion

At the top of our top 3 list of challenges, however, is still cleaning up the "system clutter" in our IT system landscape, which we caused ourselves last year through our improvisations in response to the sudden home office compulsion.

In particular, our goal now is to transfer everything into a decentralized, efficient, secure, resilient and future-open IT infrastructure. That's a lot of adjectives, but we don't want to miss any of them. The digitization initiatives in particular will benefit from our significantly higher and more differentiated requirements here. Before the crisis, it was much more difficult for us to make any progress at all - which, from today's perspective, is almost inconceivable.

The family, shareholders and supervisory bodies have also taken a big step forward in terms of digitalization. Today, we have a governance collaboration platform on which all relevant persons have regulated and secure access to all important documents, can organize tap-proof telephone conferences, sign documents, and meet in encrypted "VR lounges.

When we contacted the first solution providers, we were taken with the level of technical performance, process competence and risk expertise. The implementation has taken our committee work to a new level in terms of efficiency, transparency and crisis resilience. With our last Annual General Meeting, we were able to put our pilot system into operation - with consistently positive feedback from users. Also from the older generations.

Investments and funding sources for greater resilience

It was easier for us to invest in this because we had previously freed up a considerable sum in trade fair, event and travel budgets - which were still firmly calculated into the budget before social distancing, worldwide travel warnings and assembly bans.

We expect additional funds in the coming years from the transformation of large parts of our presence workspaces into virtual workplaces. The associated savings in rents and leases are an important source of funding for us to make further investments in strengthening our resilience to crises. Today, we are all a little more in tune with Andrew Grove and his mantra: "Only the paranoid survive." For us, the question today is no longer whether there will be another global crisis. But only: When something like this will occur again in a globally networked world. And then we will be prepared!

Focus on customer needs

In the virtualization of our global sites and the associated adjustments to structures and processes, we are guided to a significant extent by the significantly increased requirements and needs of our customers.

Security, flexibility and partnership remain the focus here. It goes without saying that many of our customers still have to operate in crisis mode and cannot always act as quickly, directly and clearly as we are accustomed to - but they always receive the highest performance values and service levels from us.

We have found out: If you go through the crisis together, nothing will break you apart in a hurry! And at the end of the day, what matters most to us is the resilience of our customer relationships.

(to be continued)

Click here for part 1

Click here for part 2

Click here for part 3

Click here for part 5

 

Authors:

Christian Schiede has been advising and assisting entrepreneurial families and family businesses to strengthen cohesion, increase competitiveness and secure value since 2003. Contact: www.schiede.com; schiede@shpadvisors.com

Bastian Schneider has been helping entrepreneurs and management teams strengthen their brands from within and lead their organizations and businesses into the future from this perspective since 2000. In more than 30 industries. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Contact: www.brandleadership.ch; bastian.schneider@brandleadership.ch

As part of an annual study, Capgemini surveyed 144 executives across the DACH region in September and October last year. Most participants were from the automotive and public sectors. The companies surveyed were those with revenues generally in excess of €1 billion per year. Questions around IT budgeting, use of smart technologies and cloud, and key technology trends were examined. The survey also focused on the impact of the Corona pandemic on IT.

Few budget cuts

The question asked was how the Corona pandemic had affected investments in IT, for example. In view of the pandemic, major cuts in IT budgets would actually have been expected. In fact, however, only just under 15 percent of participants in Germany, Austria and Switzerland are reducing IT spending overall, which is roughly the same as the previous year. A larger proportion of respondents (around 27 percent) are freezing IT budgets. That is a good 5 percentage points more than 12 months ago. By contrast, the proportion of those increasing their budgets is still 48.4 percent, compared with 63.1 percent last year. Looking only at Switzerland, the situation is similar, but slightly more companies will have to cut their IT budgets this year than in neighboring countries. Investments were made in particular in the digitization of processes - for example, in ordering processes, service offerings, but also in production.

Non-European cloud services

When asked about the use of cloud services, it became apparent that non-European cloud providers currently have a head start on the market: They provide around 28 percent of the cloud-based IT services used by companies and public authorities in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. In contrast, only a good 23 percent are purchased from European providers. Almost 45 percent of the study participants who use cloud services from non-European providers want to increase their capacities with European providers in the coming years. They justify the shift primarily with data protection compliance and the desire to increase data sovereignty.

24 percent of large companies use smart technologies intensively

The use of smart technologies has increased slightly in the last 12 months, but is slightly below the previous year's level among large companies. It is mainly users from medium-sized companies with sales of up to one billion euros who have expanded their activities in the past year. A good 8 percent of them now use smart technologies intensively or very intensively. However, this rate is still low compared with the top 50 and top 100 companies, at around 24 percent.

Success balances of specialist and IT areas converge

CIOs prioritize the areas of application for intelligent technologies similarly to the previous year. Predicting the behavior of machines, customers or markets tops the list. They also appear to be rated more positively by users than complex solutions such as recommendation systems or predicting the behavior of machines, customers or markets. As in the previous year, CIOs consider the use of intelligent technologies in their company to be less successful than their business colleagues. Since their euphoria has waned somewhat, their assessments are now closer together.

Approval of regulation and external control increases in some areas

Last year, study participants overwhelmingly rejected government or external control in connection with smart technologies, preferring voluntary commitments. This has now changed slightly: For example, approval of government regulation of smart technology application scenarios, while still low, is slightly higher than last year. External verification of measures to protect learning systems against manipulation also now finds more supporters. At the same time, the development of a company's own ethical framework for the use of smart technologies has lost support.

Technology trends: IT trends 2021 focus on security

According to the study, the most important topic in IT trends 2021 is Production Safety and Production Security. Due to the increasing digitization of production processes and a number of high-consequence cyberattacks on industrial companies last year, risk awareness in this area has apparently risen sharply. In second to fifth place are predictive analytics, protection against threats from the use of IoT-enabled devices, DevOps, and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) without the support of
smart technologies.

Source and further information: Capgemini

The Covid 19 crisis has impressively shown how important digitization is, especially for the economy. A study by BFH Wirtschaft shows that Swiss companies which, for example, have a well-developed digital communication structure or offer their employees digital working models suffered less from the pandemic in March 2020 (more information about this study).

Digital fitness test shows where measures are needed

But how "digital" is a company? While progress is obvious in some areas (e.g., the existence of an infrastructure that enables home offices), this question quickly becomes complex in other areas. This is where the digital fitness test comes in, making the topic tangible.

The test, which was developed under the direction of Prof. Dr. Reinhard Riedl from the Digital Enabling Institute, consists of an online questionnaire and can be answered either as a short version with seven questions or as a detailed version with around 35 questions. After completing the questionnaire, the companies receive an evaluation. On the one hand, this shows them areas in which they are so digitally fit that strengthening them can create a direct competitive advantage. On the other hand, the results also show further concrete measures with which decisive digital progress can be achieved.

Free service with consulting offer

The digital fitness test is a free service for Swiss SMEs. The results are treated confidentially. After the test has been carried out, the experts at BFH Wirtschaft offer a comprehensive range of consulting services tailored to the individual needs of the companies (e.g. workshops, evaluation of project plans, development of a transformation strategy).

For more information and a link to participate in the digital fitness test, please visit here.

At the beginning of 2021, the Euler Hermes Export Forecast stands at 0.78 points - the same value at which the revised indicator was already three months ago. The export forecast is above the zero-point threshold indicating the long-term average growth path of the Swiss export industry, and thus predicts a significant recovery in Swiss exports over the course of the year. This development is supported by the statistical base effect: Given the deep dip in the forecast in spring 2020, high annual rates of change hardly come as a surprise.

According to Export Forecast: Economic recovery in the second quarter of 2021

Euler Hermes expects global trade volumes to grow again by 5.8% in 2021 after a decline of 10% in the previous year. For Switzerland, 2021 should also be a year of economic recovery. In the short term, however, Euler Hermes expects the situation to deteriorate for the time being due to the second wave of the pandemic and its containment measures. "An economic resurrection is not expected until Easter at the earliest," said Katharina Utermöhl, European economist at Euler Hermes. "Then progress on the vaccination front and warmer temperatures should allow a gradual easing. The mid-year vaccination of at-risk groups sets the stage for a strong consumption boom in the second half of the year. The increasingly synchronized revival of the global economy should also provide a tailwind for Swiss exports." Utermöhl believes that a return to some degree of economic normality is not possible until 2022. However, the economic cleanup will still be far from complete by then - the unemployment rate is likely to remain at an elevated level and the wave of insolvencies will continue to roll on in 2022. Overall, Euler Hermes expects the Swiss economy to grow by 2.6% in 2021 (2022: +3.2%).

Consumer confidence remains low despite positive industry development

Asia and the emerging markets are currently seen as the biggest beacons of hope for Swiss industry. This positive outlook is an important factor for rising commodity prices, especially industrial metals. Furthermore, freight rates for the transport of shipping containers have exploded since December 2020, for which a backlog at Asian ports due to the unexpectedly fast recovery of the global economy is responsible. In addition, due to low passenger numbers, more all-cargo aircraft are operating, making air cargo more attractive to exporters and importers. As a result, the volume of global air freight traffic in December 2020 was back at the level of the previous year. In contrast to the positive development of these indicators, consumer confidence continues to be heavily weighed down by the COVID-19 pandemic, which negatively impacts the Export Forecast. If an improvement takes longer, this is likely to have consequences for the industrial sector, which is why the pandemic remains a weighty factor.

Foreign trade with China at a new high

After rising by 9.2% in real and seasonally adjusted terms in the third quarter of 2020 compared with the previous quarter, Swiss exports stagnated in the fourth quarter. Imports fell by 1.9%. Nevertheless, the second half of the year was considerably more encouraging overall than the first. Overall, exports fell by 7.1% to 225.1 billion Swiss francs in 2020, while imports declined by 11.2% to 182.1 billion Swiss francs. Stefan Ruf, CEO Euler Hermes Switzerland, commented, "It is noteworthy that foreign trade with China is at a new record high in both traffic directions. The Swiss export industry has managed to expand trade with China by a whopping 10% to 14.7 billion Swiss francs in 2020, despite COVID-19." Despite this exception, the Swiss export industry sold fewer goods overall in 2020 in the three major economic areas of Europe, North America and Asia.

Source: Euler Hermes

With the engagement of Edward Snowden, the Swiss Cyber Security Days succeeded in a special coup. As whistleblower & cybersecurity expert Edward Snowden reports in his new memoir "Permanent Record", the former CIA officer and advisor to the National Security Agency (NSA) risked everything to expose the US government's mass surveillance system. SCSD Program Director Nicolas Mayencourt makes the case that Edward Snowden powerfully demonstrated that, contrary to its original promise, the Internet has been expanded in recent decades into an Internet of government surveillance. "From Snowden we want to know how he sees the development in the past decade, and what needs to be done to get back on track with the initial promise, and whether there is any chance at all to do so," Mayencourt explains the whistleblower's involvement.

Edward Snowden live from Moscow

One of the most passionate and authoritative voices on privacy and cybersecurity, Snowden continues to warn about the growing threats of our digital age. Speaking live from Moscow, he discusses technologies and practices that have created "the most effective means of social control in the history of our species." "Everything we do now will remain forever. Not because we want to remember, but because we can't forget anymore," Snowden says, alluding to the central theme of Permanent Record. "Helping to create this system is my greatest regret."

The whistleblower shocked the world in the summer of 2013 when he broke with the intelligence establishment and revealed that the U.S. government was pursuing an unprecedented system of mass surveillance that had the potential to capture every single phone call, text message and email of every person on Earth. Fearing arrest, he fled to Hong Kong, where he
met secretly with journalists from The Guardian newspaper and filmmaker Laura Poitras. Poitras later won an Academy Award for the documentary "Citizenfour." He was also the focus of the critically acclaimed Oliver Stone film "Snowden."

The Guardian and The Washington Post were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their role in reporting the NSA leaks. Snowden saw the honor as "a vindication" for his efforts to bring the secret surveillance programs to light. Snowden himself has received numerous honors for his public engagement, including the Right Livelihood Award,
the German Whistleblower Award, the Ridenhour Award for Truth-Finding, and the Carl von Ossietzky Medal of the International League for Human Rights. He is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Passionate advocate of privacy

Since finding asylum in Russia, Snowden has been in the headlines as a passionate and authoritative champion of privacy, civil liberties and cybersecurity during what he calls "the greatest redistribution of power since the Industrial Revolution." As a result of Snowden's revelations, both the U.S. and U.K. governments challenged their surveillance laws in court, leading to new laws in both countries. Internet companies have responded to public outrage over privacy concerns by making encryption standard. Snowden continues to sound the alarm about mass surveillance and data collection by both governments and corporations.

Global Hacking and National Sovereignty

In addition to guest star Snowden, the Swiss Cyber Security Days (SCSD), the most important meeting on cyber security in Switzerland, will bring together key decision-makers and experts in the field of cyber security on March 10 and 11. During the two days dedicated to national and global cyber security, Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer, the head of the Armed Forces, Thomas Süssli, the French Cyber Defence Commander Didier Tisseyre, and numerous organizations such as Interpol, the WEF, the Geneva Center for Security Policy and the Cyber Peace Institute will be present. The fully virtual 2021 edition will focus on global hacking and national sovereignty, with a March 11 theme dedicated to SME security.

Register online now: www.swisscybersecuritydays.ch

A new study by Accenture Interactive titled "The Business of Experience" takes a close look at the topic of "experience" - customer experiences. A large majority (77 %) of CEOs surveyed on the subject said they will fundamentally change the way their companies interact with customers to drive business growth. The report, published by Accenture Interactive, is based on a survey of more than 1,550 executives from 21 countries and 22 industries.

Corona pandemic put customer experience in the spotlight

The goal was to understand the role customer experience plays in long-term business growth, consistency and relevance. According to the study, companies that align their entire business to create exceptional experiences for their customers, employees and communities outperform their peers by six times year-over-year in profitability. "COVID has further elevated the customer experience and reinforced its importance to every function and every employee," said Brian Whipple, group chief executive of Accenture Interactive. "Simply put, when you improve the customer experience, you improve the quality of life and, in turn, the business."

"Not only are expectations of brands changing, but also of companies as a whole. Everyone today wants to know how to interact with their customers in the current economic and healthcare crisis. Digital and hybrid customer experiences need to be reinvented. In the company, this affects not only the channels, but the entire value creation, via data, processes, technologies and employees, and ultimately the way value is created. The added value then lies in the experiences they enable," says Benjamin Tück, Managing Director of Interactive Switzerland.

Rapidly evolving customer needs drive the urgency of a new approach

While the focus on customer experience (CX) has traditionally been more about transactions with customers, the general focus on customer experience is a new way of working that is increasingly supported by senior management, the study found. Accenture Interactive calls this new holistic approach - which is becoming a key business imperative - the Business of Experience (BX).

The study finds that BX has become a CEO focus as it is linked to every aspect of the company's operations - unlike CX, which has traditionally been the domain of the chief marketing officer (CMO). In addition, more than half of chief operating officers (COOs) (56 %), chief strategy officers (CSOs) (53 %) and chief financial officers (CFOs) (51 %) also said their company will fundamentally change the way it interacts with its customers.

"To grow in the coming year, every company and every leader must rethink experience - especially as almost everything we do, from how we shop to how and where we work to how we interact with others, has been structurally transformed," said Baiju Shah, chief strategy officer, Accenture Interactive. "A fundamental redefinition of the customer experience is underway, and those companies that put customer experience at the center of their organization will drive growth and be the market leaders of the years and decades to come. "Becoming a business of experience requires investing differently, not more," says Benjamin Tück, managing director of Interactive Switzerland. "To compete for customer attention, funds must be consistently focused on improved experiences without compromising profitability and sustainability."

How companies become the "Business of Experience

The study shows that leading companies (i.e., companies that independently perform well in terms of financial growth and business cycle consistency) think and act differently about the customer experience than their competitors. These leading companies are far more likely to adopt the following BX approaches, consistently outperforming their peers.

1. Get to know your customers through and through. Customer needs are also likely to evolve, often in unpredictable ways, regardless of the impact of the pandemic. Consequently, companies should invest in ways to identify unmet customer needs of any scale. The study found that leading companies are twice as likely as others (55 % vs. 26 %) to say they are able to incorporate customer data into appropriate measures. But many of these leading companies also say there are limits to their data and the opportunities it can provide. That's why this point is so important - to be truly customer-centric, companies need better means to drill down and uncover those needs.
2. Make experiential innovation a daily habit. The study shows that leading companies feel better prepared to seize the opportunity to innovate on a large scale. Compared to their peers, they are more than twice as likely to have the agility to shift to new models that add value and relevance to their customers.
3. Expand the scope of responsibility for the customer experience. Experience is not just the responsibility of the CMO or COO - it's everyone's business, from the executive level down. All employees and all areas of the business should be connected and collaborative, functioning as a cohesive, customer-centric unit whose ultimate goal is to deliver the best customer experience.
4. Align IT, data and people. Becoming a "business of experience" doesn't mean investing more, it means investing differently. Leading companies are managing data, IT, and people to create agility that continuously unlocks efficiencies that can be reinvested in new performance and growth opportunities. Of the leading companies, 61 % said they have a clear understanding of what technology platforms they need to leverage to remain competitive and relevant to customers, compared to only 27 % of their peers.

Source: Accenture Interactive

As the next agenda item of our Supervisory Board meeting in summer 2022 The paradigm shift that we want to see completed in the behavior of the team and especially our managers by the beginning of 2022 is: "Out of crisis-survival mode - into future-shaping mode."

Core competencies and innovations

It still fascinates me today how quickly and consistently we switched to emergency mode in March 2020. But I am even more amazed at how long and rocky the road back to working beyond ad hoc crisis mode is. We constantly find that routines, standards, rules and other norms are no longer useful or practical.

Over the past 12 months, we have taken a very close look at our proven core competencies in our Corporate Innovation Lab, which was established in summer 2020. I would not have thought that in this way - and consistently building on our strengths - we have quickly come up with an impressive number of new business model ideas. A first, promising idea has already been fleshed out and is now in the pilot phase. It's fantastic to see how constructively and naturally our employees here work together with our main customer in mixed teams across organizational boundaries and time zones!

Paradigm shift with rituals and ideas

We also wanted to underscore our paradigm shift with new, social-distancing-compliant rituals, routines and symbols, which we introduced step by step in our organization. Roll calls at the start of every shift on the shop floor are still as taboo as most of the trade shows, conventions and major events that we would have automatically gone to in the past. Today, we start the day with virtual team breakfasts. And even on the shop floor, all of our employees now willingly use their personal smartphones to stay in touch.

We have introduced a virtual exchange for improvement ideas that is open to all employees. In the virtual idea room, improvement approaches and thoughts can be posted, viewed, explained and enriched. So much for post-its being the future in innovation management! We have often been surprised by how constructively and productively ideas are developed in the virtual room. We particularly like the fact that hierarchy plays a subordinate role. It's the better idea that counts. It doesn't matter who contributed it.

Spatial distance and customer trust

I particularly enjoy being invited more and more often by other managers and employees - even from other locations and countries - to the virtual coffee break. Here, we discuss more and more topics "in passing" as we used to at the coffee machine.

But we need to understand even better how we can secure and develop our customer relationships in the long term, largely without being present on site. Virtual design thinking workshops, virtual factory tours with the customer, product testing at the same time at the customer and supplier with virtual support are just a few examples of our efforts to maintain a high level of customer proximity despite a high physical distance.

We are constantly learning to build trust virtually and to nurture it. And we have also learned to appreciate one major advantage of virtualization: without the expense of travel, appointments can be scheduled much more quickly; participants feel noticeably more available.

The investments in the infrastructure required for this as well as in the skills of our team still seem to us to make much more sense than making business travel agencies and aviation companies big again. Against this backdrop, we have also held long and intensive discussions on how we intend to deal with the business consequences of the crisis in the medium term. We also took a close look at whether we had wisely reallocated our travel, trade show and event budgets last September in the interests of our customer relationships. For the time being, however, we are leaving them at the "new normal" level.

Employers and improvements

I am somewhat frustrated by the fact that we have been discussing adjustments to our employee processes for more than half a year - and how difficult we are finding it to release and implement the extensive improvement measures. Nevertheless, we have probably changed our working time and work location models in production and administration more in the last 12 months than in the entire 12 years before that.

Particularly when it comes to recruiting new specialists and managers, we are noticing that as a typical "hidden champion" from the provinces, we are getting better and better at reducing our location disadvantage compared to metropolitan regions. Our attractiveness as an employer is developing very positively!

As, by the way, did interdisciplinary collaboration, which we had always found difficult in the past. We were finally able to leave the old-fashioned silo thinking of the past behind us. The team spirit that has long been invoked now finally seems to have arrived in everyday working life. In particular, we haven't had to put up with political games or power struggles between individual departments for quite some time.

Leadership culture and data

The introduction of "micro-feedbacks", which we introduced at the end of every web conference or telephone conference just three months after the start of the Corona shutdown, certainly contributed to this. Since then, we have been using the resulting data base very consistently to prepare our staff appraisals as managers. The boost in quality and depth that we have been able to achieve in this area over the past few months is remarkable.

Nevertheless, the effective use of the assessment data and, above all, the empathetic handling of the resulting performance transparency currently still represent one of the greater challenges for our managers. All of them should therefore have completed their individual coaching program by the end of the year.

But things are moving forward: Increasingly, our managers have internalized that they should always act consciously and firmly as active ambassadors and guardians of our value base. More and more of them are taking the lively discussion from the management meetings to their teams and are very committed to doing their part for the good of the company as a whole - and "inciting" their employees to do so.

(to be continued)

Click here for part 1

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Authors:

Christian Schiede has been advising and assisting entrepreneurial families and family businesses to strengthen cohesion, increase competitiveness and secure value since 2003. Contact: www.schiede.com; schiede@shpadvisors.com

Bastian Schneider has been helping entrepreneurs and management teams strengthen their brands from within and lead their organizations and businesses into the future from this perspective since 2000. In more than 30 industries. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Contact: www.brandleadership.ch; bastian.schneider@brandleadership.ch

The Corona recession has now reached historic proportions. This is shown by the survey conducted in January among around 300 Swissmechanic member companies. For the sixth time in a row, and thus for the last 1½ years, the quarterly business climate index for SME-MEM is in negative territory. On the supply side, the MEM sector suffers more from employee absenteeism in the second wave (29 percent) than in the first (25 percent of companies). This is not surprising because the case numbers exceed those of spring 2020 by several times. Capacity utilization remains low, although it has increased slightly since the last quarter.

SME-MEM: "Difficult and tough decisions".

Around two out of three companies have registered for short-time working. MEM companies expect effective short-time working to rise to 26 percent in the first quarter of 2021. 62 percent have imposed a hiring freeze. One in four SMEs are planning layoffs. "These figures show that our member companies have to make difficult and tough decisions to survive in this crisis," says Swissmechanic director Jürg Marti. Unfortunately, he says, it is still too early to sound the all-clear. "The MEM sector is by no means out of the woods yet, the SME-MEM have to hang in there and need staying power."

Aid measures are still necessary

The emergency aid measures, such as the extension and simplification of short-time work, the bridging loans and the hardship provisions, were very important in securing Switzerland as a workplace during the first phase of the crisis. "The situation remains tense, which is why the aid package referred to is still absolutely necessary, needs to be extended and applied in a more differentiated manner to the individual sectors," Marti explains. Swissmechanic is therefore calling for self-employed persons and persons in a position similar to that of an employer to also be able to benefit from short-time work compensation. Since short-time work compensation is an insurance policy, all persons who pay into this insurance must also be able to benefit from it in the event of a crisis.

Subdued optimistic outlook

The MEM sector is still in the midst of the crisis and uncertainty remains high. The course of the pandemic is difficult to predict, partly because of the mutations. However, BAK Economics assumes that Switzerland and the most important sales markets will increasingly get to grips with the pandemic through vaccinations in the summer. "With the decreasing uncertainty and the global economic recovery, we also expect a noticeable impetus for demand for products from the Swiss MEM industries again in the second half of the year," says Michael Grass of BAK Economics.

Source: Swissmechanic