Happy Nice Mall

daniel: Definitely. It’s a sheer impetus for innovation, and also for creating something like a company’s memory of expertise and knowledge. Because from a single point of entry, you can bring people a universe of learning opportunities.

You have so many great people and organizations that can contribute with the latest insights, positions and issues they want to bring to people. We have not experienced this in the past. Imagine a giant technology company operating in many sectors such as Siemens. This means that we need to combine learning opportunities from, say, a functional perspective. So if you’re in finance or supply chain we need to round this up too, we call it cross-functional learning opportunities, which are topics that relate to everyone, like languages ​​or communication. We also have a complete learning environment on technology topics, product specific topics and market specific topics. It’s a huge landscape of learning opportunities, and everybody needs a subset, and everybody needs a very specific specific subset. Adapting it accordingly is a huge advantage. And I must say that with such an approach, it is much more efficient and productive as it saves time and money. Humans have access to an entire universe. They don’t have to travel, they don’t have to come across programs that maybe only a certain percentage relate to later on. It’s also really useful for driving overall business success.

Bay: And part of that business success is digital transformation, right? Adopting and diffusing new technologies such as automation and artificial intelligence. This will create a new division of labor between humans and machines that will disrupt things globally. But as these jobs evolve, new roles will be created with people who have certain advantages over machines and artificial intelligence, such as management and decision-making, communication and interaction, which are the things humans are really good at. How can business people prepare and prepare their employees for this transition from automation?

daniel: Yes, I think it’s something that has accompanied us for several years. But there again the speed and the level of skills needed increased very significantly. It’s almost like a bouquet of things you can and should do. You need to establish an identity as a company and above all say that you think learning and personal development are really important. This is a priority for the company and you need to give it a positive spin. It’s there for you, it’s there to support you, it starts with you. That’s why we launched a company-wide campaign called MyGrowth.

This is much more than a campaign, it’s a general concept and approach. However, it is really meant to inspire and engage people to try the different experiences we offer, and to help them navigate and navigate what they should and should use. Then we also started a goal on learning hours because we really wanted to nudge people and say, “Look, it’s important that you take your time and make it a priority.”

Regarding the specific skills you mention regarding automation and digitalization, we may include certain strategic topics that we pass on to our employees. We run awareness campaigns through learning opportunities. These can be targeted to specific audiences because people also need different skill levels. Or we can push it at scale. This is a very flexible system. To give an example, we have a pocket in our business called Digital Industries Software. It fits very well with what you’re talking about. Last year, the CEO of this business said we’re in a software business, so AI is a major driver of everything we do. Therefore, my entire organization needs to understand first of all what artificial intelligence is, let’s say at a very general level. But at the same time, people need to understand how we use it internally as a technology, but also as a driving force for our business and software solutions. Then we created different learning paths for different layers of expertise and therefore we were able to present the whole topic very comprehensively to thousands of people from our Digital Industries business.

Bay: So you’re doing two things. One, what you think everyone should know and learn, you’re suggesting that artificial intelligence is a big topic. But then, how do you evaluate people and their skills to identify skill gaps and then basically align learning programs with business strategy, not just get a return on investment? Of course, it all comes back to profit, but there is also a return on investment in the employee’s time and expertise. Because it’s also something you grow.

daniel: Yes. And the topic of skills is a very hot topic, I can tell you. It comes from everywhere and from so many different lenses and use cases. Technology plays an important role. A platform-based learning ecosystem with a learning experience platform at its core allows you to gain insights we’ve never had in the past. We can see what interests people. We can see why and for what they were busy learning, what they actually learned or did not learn, and so they left. If you then multiply that and see that on the overall workforce, you’ll also see what hot topics, skills, are on the horizon. You can see this in some communities. For example, we have certain communities that we refer to as digital talents, such as tech talents. And there you already see what are the next issues that will appear on the horizon. And then we can map it as a learning function, do we already have the right learning opportunities for the subjects sought? This is something. But this is the bottom-up part that is more, very important.