How digital change is transforming human resource management

Around 130 managers from all sectors of the economy came together in Münster for the BUSINESS UNUSUAL Forum. In this event format, Uwe Rotermund, Managing Director of the IT consultancy noventum consulting, poses critical questions every year about the supposedly secure and unchangeable in business and society. This year, experts from the human resources sector were invited to pursue the question of what digitalization does to work, how it questions values, orientations and solutions and turns them upside down. Until late in the evening the participants of the conference discussed New Pay, AI in the handling of personnel data, modern personnel requirements planning and agile methods. In three parallel series of topics CULTURE CHANGE, HR MANAGEMENT and HR CONTROLLING, experts presented their approaches and projects and faced interested professionals for discussion.

May I ask you what you earn?

"Let's exchange what everyone deserves. ...and then you can call in your average income, table by table." With this invitation, the speaker duo Sven Franke and Nadine Nobile set the bar high for all guests. "New Pay" - concepts that tackle and break taboos such as salary transparency were their polarizing theme. With the "New Pay" concept, performance is completely redefined, decision-making hierarchies change and the question of salary, for example, is discussed and decided in a team.

"It is no longer just about sales and profit!" How companies can be built around basic human needs so that working people can best express their creativity and their joy in achieving good results? The bestselling author Kerstin Friedrich has many answers to this question. "Employees want to be treated like adults and not like children who need to be led." In her contribution, author Friedrich explained the role of the power of "Gamification" in achieving athletic and easy goals, unleashing team spirit and promoting a cultural change in a clear and very entertaining way.

Personnel departments provide services for specialist departments

 „People Analytics“ is the catchy keyword from the technical environment of data analysis, in which new possibilities for personnel planners are constantly opening up. The way in which the composition of a team affects the cost side is normal cost controlling. However, it is much more difficult to determine what specific contribution the team composition makes to earnings. Deutsche Bank develops concepts for successful sales teams through in-depth analyses of qualifications, age and other factors, reported Anna Blaszczyk and triggered lively and controversial discussions among her audience.

The extent to which key personnel figures can be used for personnel development and forecasting in highly dynamic markets ("data driven growth") was also made clear in another practical report. Ralf Marpert, Director Finance & HR at shopware AG, explained that it is particularly important to coordinate suitable KPIs with the various specialist departments in order to jointly coordinate and track productivity and growth potential. shopware AG uses noventum's HR Analytics and HR Planning solution to manage the interaction of HR data consolidation, HR reporting and analysis with personnel cost planning.

Key strategy "Worforce Planning“

The often still underrepresented field of employee skills in terms of data was also repeatedly discussed. Under the keyword "workforce planning", for example, questions such as "Which qualities do I need today and which ones tomorrow? Can we further develop our own employees in this respect or do we have to look around the market? How do we achieve a "best fit" - i.e. the right employees in the right place at the right time and at the right place - not from the gut, but systematically over the next 5 years?

"Artificial intelligence in professional football" - a glaring keynote at the end. Smart data is pushing with power into professional football. Whether in transfer controlling, forecasting future performance development, international scouting, tactical match preparation or the composition of the squad: smart data is on the advance. Ralf Lanwehr, Professor of International Management at the University of Applied Sciences South Westphalia and a proven football expert, swept all visitors away in a firework of sayings, bon mot and serious information at the end of the event.

HR management needs more data and solutions with future potential

If the HR department wants to meet its own demands and the expected market conditions of the future, it needs more and more valid data and evaluation options. The guests and speakers at the event agreed on this. The interest in noventum HR Analytics and HR Planning was correspondingly high. noventum provides these solutions to prepare personnel data from a wide range of HR management systems for reporting, analysis and presentation in HR key figure dashboards and to enrich it with plan data from personnel and personnel cost planning.

Digitalisation also changes companies culturally

A lot is written and discussed about digital change and the cultural change that usually accompanies it. Keywords such as agility, self-organization, culture of trust, tolerance of mistakes, start-up mentality and much more can be found here. It is obvious that the hierarchically oriented corporate organization of industrial culture is being replaced or supplemented by dynamic and difficult to control forms of organization. On the way there is inevitably a lot of experimentation, some things are discarded again and promising things are established. "Whether companies will need managers at all in the future," Uwe Rotermund concluded by questioning and discussing the issue half seriously and half ironically.