June 6, 2023
6:15 a.m.:
The alarm clock projects the sunrise. On the way to the bathroom – don’t look now – there are 4 alerts. Four! Already in the bedroom! “Not now, Alexi, please, after breakfast. In the car.” Alexi is the echo box. The company’s AI system runs on Echo. Another alert at breakfast. Now there are 8 red mark ups. So should I take a look at them after all? A quick hand movement is all it takes.
Three security messages from the delegation in Asia. Two more from Payroll Administration. The electronic cash transfer for 22 freelancers and two hundred fixed employees at the plant has been blocked. There is also a compliance report. This, in turn, can only be opened with authentication in the office.
The system does not provide an explanation. In terms of integration, Human Resources is still lagging far behind Supply Chain or Finance. There, singularity has already been achieved. The systems, regardless of which ones, integrate themselves and learn from each other. The old buzzword ‚predictive analytics‘ is a reality here. The more than 400 global HR processes are not yet completely barrier-free and still fall under different international legal areas that have data transparency barriers. So it needs human hypotheses from a more experienced and thoughtful HR manager. Intuition usually already tells you how the topics are connected. So coffee and off to the office.
7:30 a.m.:
A little yoga in the car is possible if you set the self-driving mode to ‚relax‘. This does disrupt the flow of traffic a little, but allows a teleconference with Sabine on the side.
Sabine has been approached again. She wants a design thinking team for three weeks to develop new factory avatars, because HR professionals are extremely popular in product development. Not only are they professionally empathetic and think in human-systemic terms, but they can also provide the technicians with definitions and justifications from a psychological perspective.
While on maternity leave, Sabine co-founded a start-up that developed a new business model for HR consultant avatars. They crawl through the HR process and electronic communication of employees to identify special talents. And then they network them profitably. Employees can be suggested unusual career paths and lateral project assignments that will strengthen their skills.
The basis is a personality algorithm that no university has yet been able to explain, but it works and costs extremely high licenses. About five years ago, suppliers and customer companies jumped on the bandwagon and started participating. Careers are developing across the entire value chain – independently of company boundaries. Sabine was one of the last ‚personnel consultants‘ – her consultant ‚genes‘ now tick in many millions of these HR avatars worldwide. And she has a share in that. Nevertheless, she stays with us.
The good old start-up experiences are still the best school for entrepreneurial thinking for other talents. Unfortunately, there are not many ‚real‘ corporate start-ups left – the cash burn rate is too high – independent seed funds are always a decisive bit more critical and faster. The funds pull the ’seeding‘ up in a general staff manner.
Real business model disruptions have also become rare – now it’s back to classic process intelligence. But from a personnel development point of view, they are still the ultimate goal. All capabilities are trained – self-reflection, trust management, role positioning, system development, passion-collaboration, pattern recognition and pattern breaking. Even, and precisely because almost all start-ups fail. The teams need nothing but supervision from a culture coach and regular mirroring. We offer this – no more internal ‚fucked up‘ parties – we do classic ‚lessons learned‘ again. In addition to these failed start-up founders and our avatars, there are also more and more self-proposals for management positions. This is now happening globally, across all cultural and age groups, and above all, gender-neutrally. Men are also daring to take on personnel management roles again and are increasingly registering for test teams.
10:00 a.m. – Strategy meeting:
Strategic Workforce Balancing is on the agenda. The revenue forecasts are good and we can shift the ratio of freelancers to permanent employees in favor of permanent employees in almost all competence groups over the next few quarters. With permanent employees, productivity rises faster to the target because cultural barriers are lower , stable internal networks help and there are fewer value conflicts . Freelancers, however, are simply available more quickly and often match the required profile more closely. And they are significantly less demanding than permanent employees. And they fit better into a fluid organization. But hardly any of them stay longer than 6 months: From an HR perspective, a strong balance must be struck here and the quarterly view of CEOs and shareholders must be broadened somewhat. Thanks to the new KPIs, this can also be well justified.
12:00 – Lunch
With the working group Reputation Management. The culture barometer has swung internally and in the social networks, and recommends social counseling. Indeed, there is a conflict between the ‚great working place‘ and the investors – reputation managers. Here, HR has always taken on a mediator role.
1:30 p.m. – Farewell
The last change consultant is bid farewell into retirement. The systemic change consultant group has not existed for several years. In the end, they only fueled the fluid culture further. The ‚We need shelters‘ movement has been looking for points of reference and calm in the organization for years, in order to find predictable crystallization points for people in organizations . The business also needs this: predictability. Self-established workspaces. Or mentoring relationships that have been stable for years. No more self-definition of roles by holo-teams. Recognizable and calm user interfaces, equalized daily schedules and long blocks for weekly action item reviews.
Self-management and self-responsibility can be delegated for entire areas. Task force and team meeting-free annual zones are set up. No more sprint planning. The Continuous Performance Management Process is suspended quarterly and OKRs are simply halved. Decisions are no longer delegated to the lowest possible level, but are temporarily taken over by so-called ’superiors‘.
4:00 p.m. – Learning Organization Group
The aim is to represent company interests in virtual learning and virtual certification rounds. We watch a live meeting training session. With 3D glasses, to immediately see posture and augmented reality elements to explain them. Really nicely done! But off topic. We want to see our own company values and our processes in the training, and also certify them according to our own company standards. And not just see our logo on some university WBT. Also in terms of content: We still need these classic virtual leadership courses because a lot of values and intercultural skills are taught there. But not like this!
5:30 p.m. – Guest at the international works council
Another 3D livemeeting. After the abolition of the collective bargaining agreements in 2022 and the introduction of the European Works Constitution Law in 2026, there are now balanced ‚cafeteria systems‘ throughout Europe in which permanent employees and freelancers put together monetary and non-monetary benefits depending on their role. There is a great need for advice, and the works council colleagues need help in finding their advisory position.
Hard conflicts are now resolved by virtual arbitration courts – labor court proceedings have become rare. Works councils have more of an advisory role, also vis-à-vis management. They examine and recommend approval or rejection to employees and freelancers for the basic vote on company initiatives requiring approval. Political sensitivity is required here for the HR organization. Corporate policy and interrelationships must be explained and mutual changes of perspective must be systematically generated.
7:00 p.m.: Sabine calls:
A semantic sensor had sounded the alarm with me in the morning. China has generally declared avatars that run in Chinese cloud servers to be taxable subjects. Finance therefore requires transfer prices with immediate effect. In addition, there is the threat of permanent establishment. The business models of the HR service organization are no longer viable for the time being. Therefore, the AI has issued a compliance report, set all payments to zero and opened a ticket with the European Tax Equalization Authority. That can wait until tomorrow!
20:30 – Dinner at the Mongolian restaurant:
The first ‚classic‘ retirement in years. The colleague started with the company in 1990 with an open-ended employment contract. In my speech, I make fun of a few passages from his employment contract and the work regulations from back then. It’s nice to let the old maternal role aspects as an HR manager resonate for a change.
