Work 4.0 – the digital work of the future?

The digitization of society and other technological advances will have a lasting impact on the labor market, change career paths and encourage companies to reorganize. This is often referred to as “Work 4.0”. If you take a closer look, this change has long since begun (Manager Magazin).
For further investigation, this has Deutsche Telekom’s shareground team Together with the University of St. Gallen, 60 expert interviews on the subject of work 4.0 were carried out. I will briefly summarize the results for you in this article.

Work 4.0 – act in today

According to the study, work 4.0 should be established in companies today. The study sees 6 important pillars as drivers for the implementation of this so-called megatrend.
A Culture of innovation should encourage employees to get involved – open spaces should encourage creativity. There is also talk of intrapreneurship. In the block Future work one speaks of time and place sovereignty as well as a culture of results instead of presence. The guide should strengthen networks and dialogue skills – Labor policy is characterized by digital breaks. The organization of the company is characterized by flat hierarchies and communities – the Skills are creativity, entrepreneurship and ICT skills.
Tip: For more information on this, read my articles that I have under the hashtags Digital work and Future work have gathered.

Work 4.0 – act in tomorrow

Even if you could guess it, Work 4.0 is not just about the technological component. The most important thing is how people integrate into the world of work 4.0 – which skills are required for this. However, the technology in the new world of work is of course the decisive driver of the entire change (source: Cebit). Because without digitization, “Work 4.0” would not even exist. So: What are the prerequisites for the new digital world of work? What should the new thinking look like in this context? What changes will digitization result for the individual employee? And what new rules are we talking about?
The study also provided some answers to these questions. I would like to address some of the points here. The first thing that caught my eye was “child prodigies and nerds as top decision-makers” and “superiors as feel-good managers”. An approach that supports the distribution of responsibility and “serving leadership”. The creation of digital breaks is also becoming very important, as many studies in particular predict high burnout rates. “Commissioning” instead of hiring will also become more relevant, as external experts will gain in importance again – the “ Consulting 4.0 “Is thus confirmed.
It will also be exciting to see how companies want to train employees to become “hobby recruiters and entrepreneurs”. I am also curious about the importance of the framework Holocracy, Sociocracy and Democracy will take. Overall, there is a change in our working world that seems irreversible if companies want to survive (FAZ). One thing is certain: it will complex in management and companies will be challenged to carefully plan this new work. The increasing number of management frameworks alone shows that researchers see a lot of need in this area and that organizational development has become a top topic again at conferences. It remains exciting to see how this trend will work and how German companies will interpret it for themselves.
Reading tip: For more information, please read my article Leading digital in connection with the work of the future .

Machines will be colleagues – 25 theses on work 4.0

Networked work – people in harmony with robots and machines. What does this mean for the work of tomorrow? The real revolution ultimately takes place in the offices: Artificial intelligence and machine learning determine the new work, as many office jobs still manually copy data from left to right. The problem of “Boredom at work “will then probably be cleared from the world. In the further course of the study, 25 theses were compiled, which I would like to list here individually. In summary, it is clear:” Digitization does not come as a mild breeze, but as a storm. “I got the theses from of the St. Gallen Shareground Study .

THE DISCLOSURE OF THE ORGANIZATION

1. LIQUID INSTEAD OF RIGID
The new world of work is shaped by networks. Standardized back-end processes are in between
Company shared without this being visible to customers or employees. This creates
Workplaces without a clear organizational affiliation and products, without a clear sender.
2. PEER-TO-PEER INSTEAD OF HIERARCHY
Highly specialized professionals communicate in special interest communities around the world. Loyalty is no longer guided by organizational affiliation, but only by professional expertise. The loosened bonds also lead to the end of the ability to organize. Trade unions are already feeling this today: Commitment to general issues only takes place selectively.
3. ORDER INSTEAD OF HIRING
Companies rely less and less on the dem for the provision of specific services
Firmly connected workforce back. Global transparency of skills and availability
highly qualified specialists lead to “hiring on demand”. The employment relationship is changing
for work.
4. SAP INSTEAD OF MCKINSEY
Organizations are no longer structured along organizational charts; instead, complex IT systems provide standardized processes and forms of organization. It is cheaper to adapt the organization to the software than to individualize the software. Software standardization makes organizational forms more homogeneous.
5. OPEN INSTEAD OF CLOSED
Accelerated demands for transparency and the need for co-creation with customers (open innovation) lead to the opening and delimitation of previously closed company structures. Transitions between inside and outside become fluid, mastery knowledge such as patents lose their value. The ability to scale quickly and openly becomes the silver bullet. The “crowd” becomes part of the added value.
6. PROSUMENTS INSTEAD OF PROFESSIONAL PRODUCERS
Instead of employees, companies always rely on customers who, in addition to consumption, also provide many (digitizable) services for the company – often voluntarily and free of charge out of sheer enthusiasm for the product. With prosumerism they are blurred
Boundaries between producers and consumers. Voluntary digital work replaces professional employment.

WORK IN DIGITAL NETWORK ECONOMY

7. FROM EXECUTION TO MONITORING
The role of people in the production process is transformed from the provider of the work into
the supervisor of the machines. Routine processes and also physically demanding activities become
handled by them independently. Humans only control and intervene in an emergency.
8. MACHINERY AS COLLEAGUES, COOPERATION PARTNERS, CONTROLLERS
New forms of interaction between man and machine are emerging. Various types of game will coexist in the future. From people who control machines to machines as colleagues of people, to the merging of machine and person or even the complete takeover of the machines.
9. CLOUD AND CROWDWORKING AS TRANSITIONAL PHENOMENA
Digital services are broken down into smaller and smaller parts and delegated to “virtual laborers”. Big data analyzes can be used to precisely assign value contributions to individual employees. Cloud / Clickworkers provide their services in piecework. It is foreseeable that many of these activities will soon be fully digitized.
10. THE DATA READERS
With Big data Sufficient data is available for all areas of life. The ability to combine and interpret these in a meaningful way is a key qualification in digital work and cannot be substituted. Working with big data differs from traditional data analysis, however, because hypotheses are no longer required (“end of theory”).
11. WORK WITHOUT LIMITS
Highly qualified specialists perform work around the world as part of project work. Qualifications are global, transparent and comparable. The physical location of the service provider no longer plays a role. For the first time, work has the same mobility as capital.
12. PROFESSIONAL AND PRIVATE INDUSTRY
The traditional places and times of work are disappearing. For employees, this results in individual design potential, for example to better combine family and work, but also to new burdens (“always on”).
13. NON-LINEAR THINKING AS A HUMAN DOMAIN
The automation of work is finite, since creative activities remain that cannot be foreseen to be replaced by machines. These can mainly be found in very specific niches. Entrepreneurial skills, creativity and mastery of machines are considered difficult to substitute.
14. STRENGTHENING PERSONAL SERVICES
In high-wage countries, jobs with direct human interaction are upgraded. These jobs grow on a percentage basis. Standardizable and anonymous processes, on the other hand, especially in the field of ICT, are becoming the subject of offshoring and further efficiency pressure.
15. SELF-MANAGEMENT AS A CORE QUALIFICATION
Due to the flexible and needs-based awarding of orders to labor entrepreneurs, traditional work relationships and processes dissolve. The working time is made up of micro-working hours of various tasks, which the employee can adjust according to need and ability
put together.
16. CREATIVE AND PRODUCTION WORK GROWING TOGETHER
More and more often the providers of creative or intellectual performance are required, also materially
to implement. 3D printers and other tools are favoring this trend.
17. WE WONDERFUL CHILDREN
The increasing importance of IT opens the way for the “nerds” to the top floors of the company. What the musical child prodigies were in the past are now the precocious app tinkerers and data experts. This generation will make a significant contribution to the disruptive change in corporate cultures. From now on it is not formal qualifications, but exclusively technical skills that determine employability.
18. DIGITAL INCLUSION
Distance work, the anonymity of crowd and clickworking working relationships and the flexibilization of working hours also integrate social groups into the labor market that are not available for the classic normal employment relationship. This applies – as can be observed in Berlin, for example – for startups, but also for clickworkers in emerging countries.

CHALLENGES FOR LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZATION

19. CHALLENGE LATTE MACCHIATO WORKPLACE
The place of work of people in flexible employment relationships is spreading to the public space
out. Physical offices are temporary anchor points for human interaction, especially the
Serving networks. People work everywhere – just not at their own desk.
20. BREAD AND GAMES
Employees long for distraction and rewards, especially with standardized activities. Gamification and intuitive usability of IT interfaces are becoming more and more important and the work environment is approaching a virtual playing field. Employers are required to integrate playful design principles into standardized IT applications.
21. JOB-HOPPING AND CHERRY-PICKING AS A CHALLENGE FOR HR
The bond between employee and employer is loosening. Instead, flexible forms of work and cooperation mean that employees always have one foot in the labor market. This makes systematic personnel development more difficult. At the same time, expectations and increase
Employees’ demands for directly usable qualifications.
22. LEADING AT DISTANCE
The farewell to the spatially located work goes with a change from presence to
Result culture goes hand in hand. Managers have to learn that they are motivating more than controlling
become. The trick is to create personal ties through impersonal technical channels
build and maintain.
23. EXPLORE NEXT TO EXPLOIT
An increasing pace of innovation forces the constant replacement of promising new positions
Business areas and the transformation of existing business models (explore). Simultaneously
the core business, which is still profitable today, must be pursued as efficiently as possible
(exploit). Management becomes “two-handed” and acts equally in the present and in the future.
24. MATCHING WITH A CLICK OF THE MOUSE
Digital workers are quantified in the form of individual data packages – skills, experience, capacities. This makes it easier to assign orders precisely. However, disruptive factors in the data profile can also prevent matching. Personnel selection will be less intuitive, but also less oriented towards cultural adaptation.
25. GOOD DATA, BAD DATA
Sensors shape the “office of digital work”. Properties of the environment, the processes, the work results and the workers are continuously recorded in order to provide both the employer and the employee with information about the quality and improvement potential of the work. Practical benefits must be weighed against ethical considerations.
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