Everyone works with!

The trend has been going in one direction for years: A. ll should participate in the company and so far companies have always managed to do better. Driven primarily by digital technologies. When people talked about the “interactive web” in Web 2.0, apps and the Internet of Things made it much more interactive. Now there are numerous other possibilities through, among others, CloudServices. The goal of Futurework is now to adapt the workplace and work to this “hands-on culture”.

Work wherever you want (futurework)

Most of the articles on Twitter on futurework deal with the new workplace design. The articles speak of a result culture instead of a present tense culture. Under the topic: Activity based working, an “ultimate workplace” is defined, which is suitable for any type of work and in which there is a culture of trust and permanent networking. The illustration shows the idea behind the hashtag futurework and activity based working.

Futurework – a collection of office concepts?

Overall, the investigation of the hashtag shows a strong focus on room and office concepts to promote agility in the company. Sure, there is also talk of a cultural change and this is also dealt with in great detail, but mainly office concepts are evaluated. The following sentence sums up the topic very well: “The office is changing into a place of communication and networking. For this purpose, situation-oriented rooms are required that promote creative exchange or project work as well as offer retreats for concentrated and confidential work and optimally support routine activities. ” (Source Detecon ).

Is that agile?

Companies want agile employees. These should deliver high quality work, be creative, flexible and deliverable. I think the thesis that this is an important property in today’s knowledge society, I do not need to go into further. But are these new concepts really a factor in structural change in companies?
I have found many articles about concepts but have not yet found any direct case studies as to whether such a concept has really improved the work. Sure, these concepts in themselves promise really great work, but does every employee really want to work like this? To answer this question, I will conduct a case study with a company that has implemented such a concept and evaluate exactly whether and how this open space has changed the way we work.
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This is just one of many surveys that consider the purpose of work to be very important. Under a similar aspect, in 2019 I conducted workshops on the search for meaning and team vision with 9 teams and I noticed that not everyone needs meaning and that it is often difficult to find, especially in routine tasks. But the topic of meaning is currently such a big topic in the minds of many managers that a veritable search for meaning is kicked off in some companies.

Reading tip: Team workshop to search for meaning

Search for meaning in companies

Companies often advertise meaningful work and freedom on the career portal. Magazines like that too WiWo give tips on how to find more meaning in your work can. The most important are:

• Establish a private connection to the job
• Search for new tasks and train them further
• Create a productive environment
• Clarify and increase the importance of the job
• Invest in meaningfulness and possibly change jobs

Now, at one of my lectures at the Long Night of Sciences in 2019, I was asked whether every job actually wants such a clear meaning and whether this is necessary for everyone at all. I found this question exciting and gave a very detailed answer, which I want to summarize below.

Does every job have to make sense?

This question has occupied me personally for a long time and I also think for myself how much sense I actually need. In one Interview with Tim Hagemann in Die Zeit the following quote can be found:

When asked about their ideal fulfillment, people who see a purpose in their work feel happier than people whose job is purely for a living. Conversely, a high income compensates for a non-fulfilling job.

Tim Hagemann in an interview with Die Zeit

Many in my environment are looking for meaning, free development and professional advancement, but there are also a large number who have withdrawn into private life. I experience this group as completely motivated. Sometimes they are building a house or finding meaning in the family or in a club. The job should not be so stressful because it simply serves to finance life. This group has a purpose, but it’s not professional.

I think everyone needs a purpose, but it doesn’t have to be in the job.

Proactive work makes more sense than reactive work

I would also like to go into the second group: the large number of people seeking meaning in the job. In my workshops with the teams, I noticed that more proactive jobs such as sales or agile teams with a customer focus were much easier to find than routine tasks such as receptionist, support or a telephone operator. But what do I mean by that exactly?

Simple finding of meaning in pragmatic tasks

According to Duden means proactive : “ By means of differentiated advance planning and targeted action, the development of an event is self-determining and a situation is brought about “. So it’s about jobs in which everyday work and tasks can largely be determined by yourself.

I often find this in agile consulting teams or in sales. The agile teams, for example, advised the customer, recommended new technologies and implemented them. So it was more of a proactive work with a lot of personal influence. Visions such as: “We make the customer successful and help to develop the mobility of tomorrow” were enough and motivated the team and made sense. The motivation was to sell your own ideas to the customer and make them successful.

Difficult finding meaning, especially in reactive routine tasks

It was rather difficult to find meaning in teams with routine tasks. These are more reactive: you react to an event and are more or less controlled by others. Let’s take an employee at the reception of a hotel. Of course we want to satisfy our guests and be the best hotel in the world. But the problem is that the job is quite reactive.

Specifically: a guest comes and I work on his request. It is similar at the bank counter or in the German post office or in my area in support. Some time ago I was at the Schloss der Arbeit in Dortmund together with the government of North Rhine-Westphalia and the DIHK. Miners also suffered a lot from the work, as you had the feeling that you would never be finished, as the mountain seemed almost endless.

With the job mentioned, an employee actually has the feeling that you never get any further and you won’t be finished right away, because one customer after another keeps coming back. It was difficult or almost impossible to really find a vision and meaning in the work. We had the first drafts, but I wasn’t satisfied.

At the moment I think that maybe you don’t have to find any meaning at all. The teams from my workshops told me that they are so highly motivated because the working environment is simply good. Specifically, that means: I work with my favorite colleagues for a good salary and do half of what I enjoy. Maybe this is the way to go?

Conclusion

In conclusion, I can say that the question can be answered in two ways. First, there are a large number of people who do not seek meaning in their job and therefore do not need it. Second, the job seekers group is divided into two types: reactive and proactive work.

Proactive work often makes sense that is easy to find. We still find it difficult to find meaning for reactive work. My approach is that we shouldn’t force it, but rather a good environment for motivation is important for reactive work.

Specifically: decent salary, nice colleagues, modern offices and good management. At least that’s what my last conversations with employees who do such reactive work have shown. What do you mean? How important is the meaning of the job to you?

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Roundtable on Work 4.0

In order to better understand the world of work 4.0, I gathered several experts and debated this topic for 4 hours. In the following I would like to show the results and support them with quotes from the participants. More about the roundtable can be found here . The participants can be found in the following table.

The work 4.0

The future of work is discussed under the heading Work 4.0. There is no direct definition of this, but the term is also often used in marketing. In a round table For work 4.0, I worked with the participants to define initial guidelines on how work should look like in the course of digitization, and the following results were achieved:

• Work 4.0 has to be agile!
• Agility needs freedom!
• Good work is voluntary!
• The term “leadership” has to give way to “guiding”!
• Work will be more dynamic and short-cycle in the future!
• Work 4.0 is supported digitally!

This means that topics such as agility, freedom and voluntariness characterize the new world of work. One participant said: “So for me the first association with work 4.0 is the change from ‘work as a duty / must’ to ‘I can design something, I feel a purpose'” . The new work should also be supported digitally. To do this, a participant: “So digitization favors speed. If we still had pencil, paper and mail, that wouldn’t have been. “ and agile methods should contribute to making work more dynamic and short-cycle, according to the participants: “Well, I also believe that the Scrum issue has made a huge contribution to this.” This means that, unlike in the past, there will be a lot of small and rapidly changing work tasks. For example, a team leader used to give one employee 5-10 standard tasks per month, which is now more divided into 100 small tasks. In order to better understand this, I would like to explain the concepts behind Work 4.0 in more detail and give a few quotes from my participants from the roundtable.
Reading tip: What is work 4.0

New Work – work that is flexible in terms of location and time

Another point is work that is flexible in terms of location and time. One participant says: “So 30% is on average[im Home Office] . And […] home office[ist] of course no problem[und …] is often also approved. And working hours are also relaxed with us. There are no core working hours, you can come to us whenever you want. ” So it is possible that work can be done from anywhere, anytime. This is what the union’s executive committee also says in my round table: “Work wherever you want. With mobile devices this is no longer a problem at all. We have also created the company agreement in such a way that working hours are recognized from anywhere, i.e. theoretically also from the swimming pool. You document it. You can work from anywhere. Mobile work is an important topic.”
So, with a view to the future, it seems that we can work from anywhere, anytime. This is often described with the vision of New Work, which is shown in the following figure.
Reading tip: What is New Work

New and agile office complexes

There are also new office concepts. There should be a workplace for every activity. Different zones should be set up in the office for, for example, quiet and creative work. I know many medium-sized companies as well as corporations that are currently converting their buildings. One participant in my roundtable also said: “Every table is available, it is not booked in advance, because ultimately it makes the system even more complex if I had to think about it every evening: Where do I sit tomorrow? That would just be too much of a hassle. And so, in principle, every workplace is free for everyone. I can sit down wherever I want. ” The classic desk is dying out, according to the participants. The following figure illustrates a possible interpretation of the new office models using the example of noris network from Nuremberg, which kindly approved the pictures for me. So in the future we will not only work at any time and place, but also in the “right place” for every activity.
Reading tip: What is futurework

Agile teams

Furthermore, these new working models should not run using classic methods, but agile teams should organize themselves, arrange vacations with each other and in some companies even hire employees together. It will be exciting to see how this trend develops. The first effects of this finding can already be seen in agile Scrum teams (mostly in IT).
Reading tip: What is agile

Conclusion

The roundtable showed that the goal of the Work 4.0 projects is increased agility and voluntariness. Work 4.0 should be digitally supported, guided and more dynamic and short-cycle than current work. Work should also become more flexible in terms of time and location.
Overall, the roundtable showed that the need for novel concepts and models with which companies meet the design of Work 4.0 has existed for a long time. But only today have the framework conditions and the degree of digitization been created to actually implement these changes. Before that, on the one hand, the new office complexes had not yet been planned and, on the other hand, there was a lack of mobile technology (laptops and smartphones) and secure access as well as valid company agreements for mobile work and home office. So it remains exciting!
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Eat like an emperor in the morning, like a king at noon, like a beggar in the evening (unknown).

Tips for agile nutrition in everyday office life

My recommendation is never to give the body more than 500 calories at a time. Of course, the cheat day, i.e. a day on which you eat as much as you like, can be carried out, but you should stick to the nutrition plan on the other days. As soon as the body has used 200 of the 500 calories, you feel hungry again. So you replenish the calories to 500-600. The snacks serve this purpose. In this way you avoid the lunchtime low and regularly supply the body with energy, which it consumes directly and does not store it as fat. If the body has too many nutrients, it stores them and uses them to accumulate fat. My daily meal plan is as follows:

• 8:00 am breakfast
• 10:00 am snack 1
• 12:00 noon
• 15:00 snack 2
• 18:00 dinner

breakfast

For breakfast I often make myself a shake with raspberries, corn flakes, milk, protein powder and a little honey. This gives the necessary strength for the morning. The advantage is that the shake is made quickly and you can even have breakfast within 10 minutes. Of course, I always vary the shakes and try out new recipes.

Snack 1

Now you get hungry again around 10 o’clock. I like to take a roll with salmon or turkey breast with me. So you have energy again until noon and you are not so hungry at noon. Quark or a small bowl of corn flakes and a few nuts can also be eaten here.

Noon

For lunch I usually have something prepared at the beginning of the week. There are whole wheat pasta or peas and carrots with a little meat. Once a week I treat myself to a food truck. Because of the snack between meals, I am no longer so hungry at lunchtime and therefore do not fall into a lunchtime low because I no longer eat so much.

Snack 3

In the afternoon you get hungry again. Here I usually eat a yogurt and drink a glass of juice. This is how the vitamins fill up too. You also have the strength to tackle some tasks again and have 2 productive hours to go by 5 p.m.

dinner

In the evening I eat similar to lunch or sometimes I like a salad, which I can mix together quickly. Otherwise there is also like sheep’s cheese or a protein shake. Every now and then there is only one bread with a topping. So I stay true to the saying: “Like a beggar in the evening”.

Excursus: business lunch or buffet

There are also cases in which you are not at home and have something to eat with colleagues in a hotel, restaurant or buffet. Of course it is rude to unpack your Tupperware there. The simple tip here is just not to eat the greasiest food. Look at the buffet or on the menu for salmon, rump steak or fillet. Just avoid roasting or hearty dishes.

Sport besides everyday office life

In addition to everyday office life, I do moderate exercise and visit a gym. Once on Wednesday and once on Saturday or Sunday. So that I can also go during peak times, I am in a small, owner-managed studio. So I pay twice as much as with the chains, but have my peace and quiet and can train stress-free. I think that two training sessions are always possible in addition to everyday life and also contribute to productivity.

Conclusion

It is not difficult to eat in the office. This is also possible in addition to a stressful everyday life. Of course, besides my method, there are certainly many more ways and it is certainly even healthier. However, I get along well with this plan and have my desired weight, feel fit and am productive. I often hear people say that shopping for all those groceries is very stressful and that they don’t add them. I feel the same way, that’s why I order from the every week Rewe delivery service . Take a look at that too! Below you can also find a picture of what foods I take to the office on a typical day. But in conclusion one can say: moderate exercise and 5 small meals a day already help massively.

• Tip: Rewe delivery service

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The project manager today!

What about the project manager today? A keyword is probably the technical management of employees in the matrix organization. A kind of toothless tiger who has to get people to work on his project in addition to their day-to-day business. It is seldom that you are assigned full-time staff, because even if you do, the employee is often still on 5 other projects. At least that’s my impression. The project manager has to motivate and bring the various stakeholders together and keep the project going. But now the question remains: what does digital change do to a project manager? Will the increasingly distributed and interdisciplinary teams, often from different organizations, be networked as a generalist, like from a project magazine to a control center?
Reading tip: Generalist or specialist?

Round table on the future in PMO

Some time ago I did a study to answer this question. For this purpose, I brought together a wide variety of participants from the field of project management in a round table. The full report is available in the minutes to fourth round table . The participants of the roundtable are listed below. The study can also be found under Lindner et al. (2017) in the HMD – Practice of Business Informatics and was created as part of my doctoral thesis. However, the results serve well to concretize the project manager2030.
Participants of this round table:

Together with this expert from the PMO (project management office), consultant for project management and project manager, we talked about the daily work and found that the digital change is already influencing the work of the project management experts present. In the study by Lindner et al. (2017) the following examples can be found:

• A development team based in India with whom communication only takes place via Jira (https://de.atlassian.com/software/jira) and email and Skype
• Distributed team at different locations, which has two regular appointments for a meeting per month and works together virtually via web sessions
• Meetings are often held in a neutral location, such as a café, between locations using mobile technology
• Opportunity to consult the best professionals around the world
• Locations in rural areas can access specialists from the main location
• Employees can be kept after the location has been closed (4 days home office – 1 day at the main location)
• Massive number of e-mails, notifications and other tool-internal messages often at the same time
• Often communication runs on more than one channel at the same time (notification via Skype that an e-mail has been sent)

Conclusion # Projektleiter2030

What can be derived from this for the project manager of the future? It is becoming apparent that the project manager will take over the control of projects using tools. All communication runs through a wide variety of channels (analogue and digital) at the project manager. In addition to massive emails and notifications, this also includes calls and personal conversations. Furthermore, the work seems to be more distributed. While experts worldwide communicate with the project manager and distribute this work using tools such as Jira or similar, he must certainly also meet stakeholders and project staff on site.
According to the results of the roundtable, the question of the project magazine can be answered: “Will the project manager become a generalist due to the growing complexity of the control center, the increasingly distributed and interdisciplinary teams, often from different organizations?” at least partially supported by arguments. The project manager will act in a mixture of analog and digital media with distributed teams and control them using tools via Jira or similar. Communication of all kinds will converge with him and he must be present in both virtual and analog space at the same time. One could almost assume that it is an interface between the analog and the digital world.
Reading tip: The digital workplace
Many thanks to the project magazine! With this article I won the first prize of the blog parade and I can look forward to an exclusive ticket for the PM Welt 2018!
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What is Industry 4.0

There are numerous definitions of Industry 4.0 and I also ask myself: What is Industry 4.0? So says, for example BDI : Industry 4.0 stands for the fourth industrial revolution. After mechanization (Industry 1.0), mass production (Industry 2.0) and automation (Industry 3.0), the Internet of Things and Services is now finding its way into production. Industry 4.0 technologies enable outstanding growth opportunities and competitive advantages for Germany as a business location. Forecasts assume that companies can use Industry 4.0 to increase their productivity by around 30 percent.
The Gabler Business Lexicon sees it more as a marketing term: “Industry 4.0” is a marketing term that is also used in science communication and stands for a “future project” by the German federal government. The so-called fourth industrial revolution is characterized by the individualization or hybridization of products and the integration of customers and business partners into business processes.
That too Magazine viernull describes the development of Industry 4.0 with a historical development: “Industry 4.0” stands for the “fourth industrial revolution”. Before that, there must have been three other revolutions – at least this is what the creators of the term suggest: “Industry 1.0” means the era of mechanics that began in the 18th century, “Industry 2.0” refers to the era of electronics (20th century). Century) and “Industry 3.0” according to this logic stands for the increasing automation of industry through the use of office IT since the 1970s.
So it seems that this is the fourth industrial revolution and there have been three more. I have summarized examples and metaphors for this in the following illustration.

Components of Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is also a kind of collective term for many services and products. On the side of the BDI I have summarized these in the following figure. Certainly these are not 100% complete, but mostly the core aspects. Since it is primarily a term from the government, I mainly used the government pages and the BDI as sources.

With Social machines says the BDI: As in social networks on the Internet, intelligent machines exchange information with one another. You can organize yourself independently and coordinate processes and appointments together.
Global Facilities says according to the BDI: Machines do not only exchange data within a production facility. A company’s machines are also networked with systems from suppliers and customers. If a supplier fails, alternative suppliers are analyzed in real time with regard to their capacity utilization or costs and automatically commissioned.
Of the Augmented operator means people as “watchdogs”. So says the BDI: In the smart factory, people remain a central part of production. As an “augmented operator”, he controls and monitors the production processes in the production network.
Smart Products means that every produced part has a chip with it, which contains or sends information about it. V irtual production thinks that there will be abstract and virtual images of factories. Unfortunately, there is hardly a clear example on the subject and I am currently not in a position to describe it better. If you have anything about it, feel free to write it in the comments.
Smart Services thinks that in the future billions of intelligent products will be connected to the Internet during their service life and huge amounts of data ( Big data ) about your own operating and product status in a data cloud.
Industry 4.0 largely stands for networking and the intelligence of machines. It is hardly an argument that this fact leads to a lot of data and that the term big data is therefore closely linked to Industry 4.0 as well as topics relating to data protection. Read more on the Page of the BDI and definitely take a look at my book suggestions Digitization in medium-sized companies .

Examples of Industry 4.0

But what exactly is Industry 4.0 and what is not? In the following I have looked for examples and show some fictional examples as well as real scenarios from Bremen.

That’s what he says Industry signpost : An example of Industry 4.0 is when “The parts know who they are”. This “intelligent factory” is called “Open Integrated Factory Showcase. It shows the networking of production and IT. The special thing about the factory is that the workpieces inform the machine how they are to be processed.

As an example of this scenario, you also state that a machine can produce 16 different variants of the product. The workpieces contain information about the production process. The parts know who they are and can talk to the system. The parts always go to the correct station and tell it: “I am this part, in this version and now please process me correctly”. So you can use Industry 4.0 to produce a wide variety of product variants on one production line.

Now I have to go to the information page Digitization in Bremen Found eight specific examples, some of which I would like to present to illustrate Industry 4.0. All examples are from the same page and partially copied.
Example 1: Ancillary cost bills are time-consuming for Bremen Airport – for the more than 100 individual transactions, meter readings for water and gas must be read and billed. With digital meter reading and intelligent document management, the airport was able to save an enormous amount of time.
Example 2: Robots are becoming more complex and more powerful. A Bremen logistics company made use of technical progress to transport returns of online orders fully automatically through a warehouse. This saves time and money and takes the strain off employees.
Example 3: An industrial service provider in Bremen uses the cloud in a targeted manner to allow distributed teams to work with workflows. All work processes relating to HR and personnel are completely relocated online. The employees of the personal office are located all over Germany and there is little need for coordination.
Example 4: Monitoring heavy transports from several thousand kilometers away for progress, transport damage or improper handling – a Bremen logistics service agency dreamed of this for a long time. With an Industry 4.0 project, logistics monitoring was introduced, which made it possible to monitor the load.
All examples are detailed on the page The Digitization of Bremen listed. In conclusion, I will go into the examples again.

Conclusion

The article deals with the question: What is Industry 4.0? Industry 4.0 is a term that is primarily a project of the federal government and is not actually used abroad. This is the fourth industrial revolution, which deals with the networking and intelligence of machines. There are already numerous examples such as chips and monitoring systems for freight as well as machines that can automatically maintain. People should increasingly take on the role of watchdogs. With Industry 4.0, problems such as big data and data protection are becoming more relevant than before for German companies.
Reading tip: Article on agile production
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What is Industry 4.0

There are numerous definitions of Industry 4.0 and I also ask myself: What is Industry 4.0? So says, for example BDI : Industry 4.0 stands for the fourth industrial revolution. After mechanization (Industry 1.0), mass production (Industry 2.0) and automation (Industry 3.0), the Internet of Things and Services is now finding its way into production. Industry 4.0 technologies enable outstanding growth opportunities and competitive advantages for Germany as a business location. Forecasts assume that companies can use Industry 4.0 to increase their productivity by around 30 percent.
The Gabler Business Lexicon sees it more as a marketing term: “Industry 4.0” is a marketing term that is also used in science communication and stands for a “future project” by the German federal government. The so-called fourth industrial revolution is characterized by the individualization or hybridization of products and the integration of customers and business partners into business processes.
That too Magazine viernull describes the development of Industry 4.0 with a historical development: “Industry 4.0” stands for the “fourth industrial revolution”. Before that, there must have been three other revolutions – at least this is what the creators of the term suggest: “Industry 1.0” means the era of mechanics that began in the 18th century, “Industry 2.0” refers to the era of electronics (20th century). Century) and “Industry 3.0” according to this logic stands for the increasing automation of industry through the use of office IT since the 1970s.
So it seems that this is the fourth industrial revolution and there have been three more. I have summarized examples and metaphors for this in the following illustration.

Components of Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is also a kind of collective term for many services and products. On the side of the BDI I have summarized these in the following figure. Certainly these are not 100% complete, but mostly the core aspects. Since it is primarily a term from the government, I mainly used the government pages and the BDI as sources.

With Social machines says the BDI: As in social networks on the Internet, intelligent machines exchange information with one another. You can organize yourself independently and coordinate processes and appointments together.
Global Facilities says according to the BDI: Machines do not only exchange data within a production facility. A company’s machines are also networked with systems from suppliers and customers. If a supplier fails, alternative suppliers are analyzed in real time with regard to their capacity utilization or costs and automatically commissioned.
Of the Augmented operator means people as “watchdogs”. So says the BDI: In the smart factory, people remain a central part of production. As an “augmented operator”, he controls and monitors the production processes in the production network.
Smart Products means that every produced part has a chip with it, which contains or sends information about it. V irtual production thinks that there will be abstract and virtual images of factories. Unfortunately, there is hardly a clear example on the subject and I am currently not in a position to describe it better. If you have anything about it, feel free to write it in the comments.
Smart Services thinks that in the future billions of intelligent products will be connected to the Internet during their service life and huge amounts of data ( Big data ) about your own operating and product status in a data cloud.
Industry 4.0 largely stands for networking and the intelligence of machines. It is hardly an argument that this fact leads to a lot of data and that the term big data is therefore closely linked to Industry 4.0 as well as topics relating to data protection. Read more on the Page of the BDI and definitely take a look at my book suggestions Digitization in medium-sized companies .

Examples of Industry 4.0

But what exactly is Industry 4.0 and what is not? In the following I have looked for examples and show some fictional examples as well as real scenarios from Bremen.

That’s what he says Industry signpost : An example of Industry 4.0 is when “The parts know who they are”. This “intelligent factory” is called “Open Integrated Factory Showcase. It shows the networking of production and IT. The special thing about the factory is that the workpieces inform the machine how they are to be processed.

As an example of this scenario, you also state that a machine can produce 16 different variants of the product. The workpieces contain information about the production process. The parts know who they are and can talk to the system. The parts always go to the correct station and tell it: “I am this part, in this version and now please process me correctly”. So you can use Industry 4.0 to produce a wide variety of product variants on one production line.

Now I have to go to the information page Digitization in Bremen Found eight specific examples, some of which I would like to present to illustrate Industry 4.0. All examples are from the same page and partially copied.
Example 1: Ancillary cost bills are time-consuming for Bremen Airport – for the more than 100 individual transactions, meter readings for water and gas must be read and billed. With digital meter reading and intelligent document management, the airport was able to save an enormous amount of time.
Example 2: Robots are becoming more complex and more powerful. A Bremen logistics company made use of technical progress to transport returns of online orders fully automatically through a warehouse. This saves time and money and takes the strain off employees.
Example 3: An industrial service provider in Bremen uses the cloud in a targeted manner to allow distributed teams to work with workflows. All work processes relating to HR and personnel are completely relocated online. The employees of the personal office are located all over Germany and there is little need for coordination.
Example 4: Monitoring heavy transports from several thousand kilometers away for progress, transport damage or improper handling – a Bremen logistics service agency dreamed of this for a long time. With an Industry 4.0 project, logistics monitoring was introduced, which made it possible to monitor the load.
All examples are detailed on the page The Digitization of Bremen listed. In conclusion, I will go into the examples again.

Conclusion

The article deals with the question: What is Industry 4.0? Industry 4.0 is a term that is primarily a project of the federal government and is not actually used abroad. This is the fourth industrial revolution, which deals with the networking and intelligence of machines. There are already numerous examples such as chips and monitoring systems for freight as well as machines that can automatically maintain. People should increasingly take on the role of watchdogs. With Industry 4.0, problems such as big data and data protection are becoming more relevant than before for German companies.
Reading tip: Article on agile production
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What is technostress?

Wikipedia says: Technostress is a specific sub-category of the stress phenomenon. Technostress is caused in everyday situations in which the user is overwhelmed by new technical devices or systems. Technostress is a reaction of the body to the strong psychological stress that can be caused by technology. In many ways, it represents resistance to changes that newly introduced technologies bring with them.

Why is there technostress?

All participants of my Round tables state that their companies use a high proportion of tools and new technologies. Along with this, the participants notice technostress due to overstimulation and constant availability. So is the consensus of the participants:

• Massive number of e-mails, notifications and other tool-internal messages often at the same time
• Often communication takes place on more than one channel at the same time (notification via Skype that an e-mail has been sent)
• Many of those present take the company laptop home or to the weekend
• Rest and leisure suffer mainly from the merging of private and company smartphones
• Many of the participants do not have a private smartphone and admit to answering e-mails while on vacation
• However, the participants do not need external help but demand that employees protect themselves

But how does such a technostress show up alongside the usual stress symptoms? The following examples of focusing are given:

• In the past, more time was spent on a task, nowadays new tasks are often assigned directly while a task is being processed
• E-mails are often only written in lower case letters and are usually sent incompletely, so that several e-mails have to be forwarded

Conclusion: technostress in the workplace

In the summary, the consensus of participants is that “The human factor simply cannot be forgotten” and it’s not enough “Just any tools” to put down. “One must[die Mitarbeiter] raise awareness, have to pick them up “ is the collective opinion of the participants. In conclusion, one of the participants clarified the statements about distance work: “Agility can actually only arise when you have seen each other. Because it makes a difference whether we sit 1.5 meters apart or whether there is a screen in between and the other person is 500km away. “
Reading tips:

• Digitization in the workplace
• Risks of digitization in the workplace
• Opportunities of digitization in the workplace

Der Beitrag What does technostress actually mean? erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

What is digital self-organization?

A look into practice shows that digitality is increasingly leading to a traditional understanding of hierarchical organizational structures changing and legitimizing power being weakened or even reversed (cf.Signhardt). Examples, the CMS system WordPress was developed on a project basis. There are no offices, no fixed working hours and internal communication takes place via the company’s own chat system and blogs. Every single developer was self-organized. Even in traditional companies, projects are increasingly being supported by tools and teams are increasingly distributed. Even if an employee works from home.
The controllability and control is on the one hand increasingly difficult for the management and on the other hand must be replaced by self-organization and trust. Information can be distributed in real time and every employee can communicate with anyone regardless of time and place. So many interactions happen in this virtual space that a single manager can no longer record them or evaluate the amount of data and interactions. This status can also be out of date by the time it is evaluated. Another consequence of acceleration is that tasks increase rapidly. You can see this on Jira boards with more than 600 open tasks and overflowing lists of open points.
But the need for self-organization is also increasing for employees. Employees have to organize themselves better, especially in work that is flexible in terms of location and time. If a manager used to control everything, an employee now has to organize himself in a so-called virtual room.

Digital self-organization for mobile work and home office

Home office is the dream of many employees and promises maximum flexibility in work and saves the commute. But especially the daily work in the home office takes place in a virtual room already shown in the figure.
That’s what it says Magazine CIO : However, mobile work models require more organization. Company agreements define the legal framework. This ranges from equipping the home office to billing the heating costs for the home office. Information events and clear agreements at the beginning of the project also help employees to discuss doubts and concerns with their superiors. Finally, many agreements also include how employees can record their working hours and how they deal with the subject data protection bypass.
Furthermore, it is not possible, as usual, to simply go to colleagues and coordinate. In the home office you always use e-mails, web meetings and Skype. You always have to look at information, tasks and contact people to organize. It is also up to the employee to set up the workplace. What many often do not consider: Your own person can also become a source of interference if there is a lack of self-discipline. On the one hand you have to be productive and on the other hand you have to not forget the work-life balance.

Digital self-organization in new office concepts

Many companies copy this coffee house atmosphere and transfer it into modern working environments by creating meeting spaces that are intended to encourage lively dialogue and informal exchange among employees. Of course, not without entrepreneurial considerations. From a strategic point of view, such an investment pursues the goal of increasing employee motivation and generating willingness to change. Initiative, innovative thinking and self-organization should be encouraged for the benefit of added value and corporate development (Source Product manager blog ).
You can already see in this quote: Self-organization and initiative are the focus. With Flexdesk concepts, employees increasingly have to look for desks themselves and decide in which part of the building where and how they work. highly concentrated, group meeting, … you are always on the move. Every day requires a lot of organization and the hourly look at the calendar is necessary to get from A to B on time. Is the colleague in the home office, do I need a meeting room or a web session, do I want to concentrate on my work today, should I book a beanbag in the open space? All of this is up to you!
Reading tip: Konstruhardt: Success factor performance management

Conclusion

Home office, mobile work and new office complexes create digital spaces in which a higher level of self-organization is necessary. This has numerous opportunities but also demands more of the employee and is examined under the term digital self-organization. How are you doing, tell me in the little survey!
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Der Beitrag Digital self-organization for work that is flexible in terms of location and time erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.

• Declaration of NewWork
• What is work 4.0
• Roundtable on Work 4.0

NewWork using the example of an IT group

The creation of software is a process that involves a high degree of division of labor. Those involved have to think in a networked way and react quickly to changing requirements – be it due to customer requests or legal changes, according to the group manager. For this reason, better networking and cooperation should arise with a new building. There are various meeting rooms of all kinds as well as rooms for fitness, an orchard and a work surface in the outdoor area. There is also customer support in-house. “The entire building is made for communication and movement,” said the manager of the IT group in my roundtable.
Before building the concept, we tested various pilot concepts together with 120 employees. For this we rented a building and every employee who applied was allowed to work on one of the concepts for two weeks and give us feedback. Our new NewWork concept arose from this.
During the subsequent tour of the IT group’s building, the seating arrangements in the open space could be observed. Teams often sat close together and small “team islands” could be noticed, according to the managers of the IT group. A “Jump Day” concept was designed so that these islands could not establish themselves permanently. Every employee is required to change jobs and teams on this day. Jump Day takes place once a year to ensure a balance between security and change, says the manager of the IT group. The agile coach of the IT group also assesses an advantage in the room occupation and invalidates the prejudice that fewer employees have space: The agile coach of the IT group also assesses an advantage in the room occupation and invalidates the prejudice that fewer employees have space have: “I think it was around 70% where on average you have a cast at all. So 30% are free on average. And even if working from home is of course no problem for us, we often also approve. There are[auch] no core working hours, you can come whenever you want with us. “

NewWork using the example of a sporting goods manufacturer

In return, the sporting goods manufacturer also presented the design of the NewWork concept. There are no permanent jobs here either. “There is a fitness studio for employees as well as opportunities for other sporting activities. With the help of a building that is a few 100 meters away from the HQ, we are constantly testing new office concepts. There are permanently 3 different concepts on 3 floors, which we are successively trying out. Up to 300 employees are able to test the concepts. For example, the mixture of sports hall and office or a mixture of shared apartment and office will be tested there, ”said the representative of the sporting goods manufacturer.
This is supplemented by various areas for work, such as highly creative, quiet and team areas. It is important to create the right place for every activity. Working in a digital context in particular is highly creative and, according to the manager, can no longer be carried out from a traditional desk alone. “The vision is to create an atmosphere that promotes flexibility and cooperation and breaks down hierarchies,” said the manufacturer’s representative.
For the company, it’s about getting faster and promoting creativity and innovation, said the representative. At the beginning the Flexidesk principle met with a lot of resistance, but if you look now, not all desks are occupied and the meeting rooms are always full. “It is communicated and networked. This ensures agility and speed and ultimately I have the feeling that it is also space-saving because many are somehow also in the home office on Friday or sometimes in the home office for two days.

NewWork using the example of an IT data center service provider

The SME participants have also already designed their first concepts for open spaces in the company. These mostly result from a planned renovation of the building. The IT data center service provider is also presenting its concept.
In the course of a renovation, an office space was converted into an open space concept together with a service provider and the inclusion of feedback from employees. Zones were created for highly concentrated, calm and creative work and teamwork. The aim was to offer the right workplace for every activity. “Working in IT in particular requires a high degree of flexibility, quick reactions and the incorporation of changes,” says the in-house consultant. “The aim is to create a suitable zone for every job. For highly concentrated work you can either go to the desk or go to our area with various beanbags with headphones. We have set up special areas for quiet work and set up a think tank for creative work groups. Since every employee has a laptop, it is easy to find a new job every hour ”, the consultant continues.
The entrepreneur’s consultant sees the concept as a success and is now planning to gradually renovate more areas in order to create more office space especially for concentrated work. In data center operations in particular, it is important to act quickly and effectively in the event of unwanted failures or updates in order to maintain an availability of 99.9%. According to the consultant, we can become faster and more agile, especially through new concepts.

Conclusion on NEwWork

It cannot currently be assumed that the concepts presented are already in a final stage. Especially in office concepts and mobile work, there are numerous open questions that need to be dealt with
The representative of the trade union from the roundtable is currently carrying out a more in-depth evaluation. The focus of this evaluation was the influence on the efficiency and the health burden. The implementation of NewWork and agile methods is often and gladly mentioned in his breath. The first samples show that the number of burnout cases examined cannot be related to agile methods or new office concepts, according to the union’s executive committee. There is also a higher level of communication and agility through new concepts.
However, according to the union’s board of directors, it is becoming increasingly difficult to perceive incorrect and overloading of employees and to protect them. New topics such as technostress due to constant availability and information overload due to a large amount of data are also increasing. These phenomena in particular are new and go hand in hand with increasing digitization and increased communication, which is also promoted specifically by new office concepts.
However, these studies are only random samples and not very informative, limited by the union’s executive committee. It is still exciting how the development of the Newwork will continue and what long-term consequences can be derived. To further develop these concepts, the union is in constant dialogue with the member companies and takes regular trips to the Silicon Valley.
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Der Beitrag Examples of NewWork and office concepts erschien zuerst auf agile Companies.