How Deutsche Post DHL is accompanying its employees through digital transformation and creating enthusiasm for the company among talented young people. Interview with Anne Walther, EVP Corporate HR Standards and Programs at Deutsche Post DHL about the CEO as “chief experiment officer,” working environments in the global context, and the role of HR in the digitalized working world.
Ms. Walther, let us talk about the topic of digitalization. How do you see current developments, and how do you gage the effects on your own business?
Digitalization – just like globalization – brings with it challenges and outstanding opportunities for companies and consumers alike. Thanks to the new possibilities provided by global interconnectivity, communications can become more transparent and transactions can be conducted extraordinarily efficiently. This will support worldwide economic growth, the global exchange of goods, and subsequently the logistics business as well. If, in the long run, 3-D printing becomes a commonly used technology, this might have disruptive effects on the global exchange of goods. But as long as that is not the case, the technologies we see today provide us with a lot of different ways to improve our processes. This is especially true of the methods we use to communicate with our customers, how we optimize our processes (e.g., in our logistics centers), or how we control our internal processes in finance and HR. We are intensely exploring the topics of automation, robotics, virtual assistant, and augmented reality and considering how we might implement and apply them meaningfully in our business. We have just successfully completed an entire series of worldwide augmented reality pilot projects in our division DHL Supply Chain, and in the package sector, we tested a robot that accompanies delivery drivers on their delivery routes and transport letters and packages for them last fall.
At the moment, we see more and more digital labs springing up, above all in Berlin, San Francisco, Israel, or China. How can their bonds and relevance to the rest of the organization be secured?
We are also establishing digital labs, in Berlin, for example. But it is not only a matter of digital labs, but above all of smaller units that can spark new developments. Deutsche Post DHL Group, for instance, has been a strategic partner to Plug and Play, a global startup and venture funding platform specializing in the support of technology startups during the early phase of their operations, since the beginning of June 2017. In introducing the StreetScooter, our own electric vehicle used for package deliveries, we gave new, powerful stimuli to e-mobility in Germany. Saloodo, our own online freight platform, has created a new B2B transport marketplace.
When you speak about top management awareness and involvement, how exactly should we picture this?
Top management plays an important role in shaping cultural transformation, practicing it, and driving it forward in the company. An agile organization requires willingness to learn continuously and a new understanding of leadership with a culture of tolerance for mistakes and hierarchy-free dialog. It requires a high level of willingness to try things out. The CEO in this case becomes the “chief experiment officer” who more and more frequently asks how quickly new ideas can be tested in pilot projects to measure their practicality and, ultimately, to generate added value for customers.
How do you see the role of HR in this context?
HR’s task is to drive digital transformation for its own personnel function. This also includes a radical rethinking of processes. It also means less governance and more service, fewer regulations, but more user experience instead. Digitalization represents a great opportunity for HR to conduct administrative processes or HR data management more efficiently by using IT solutions, for instance. Employees and managers have more opportunities to act autonomously or to answer employees’ questions through the use of virtual assistants. Wherever HR has an important intermediary function between employees and managers (personnel interviews, feedback, development opportunities), employees and managers will enter a more direct dialog with one another because of the changed culture. Ultimately, HR will withdraw from the intermediary position and create platforms that support employees and managers in their direct interaction. When we look at other sectors with an intermediary function – let’s take the example of travel agencies or brokers – we see that the role of these intermediaries has been replaced by platforms or marketplaces. This is imaginable for HR as well; when recruiting personnel, the essential task is to bring the person looking for a job together with the person offering a job. I can very well imagine completely new opportunities for employees and managers arising from digital platforms with transparent information services without any need for HR to intervene.
We also find inspiration in the areas of recruiting and learning from startups. The use of social media channels to address candidates, the automatic screening of résumés on the basis of machine learning, or the use of video interviews and short learning content that can be retrieved by smartphone while moving around are only one group of interesting options.
HR’s task is to drive forward cultural transformation in the group while controlling and accompanying the effects of digitalization on the corporation’s own employees. We need concrete strategies and learning services to advance the development of our employees and prepare them for a digital working world. We must understand what new skills we will need in the digitalized world and how we can recruit people as employees who are already in possession of these skills.
What does digitalization mean for the people who you will have and will want to have in the HR context in the future?
At HR, just as in all other units, we need employees who are open to change and who are prepared to participate in driving change. Specifically, we cooperate more intensely with our colleagues in the IT department than we did in the past. HR is no longer merely the user of master data systems, but collaborates with the IT colleagues to develop applications for employees. In the future, HR will play a decisive role above all with respect to topics such as structured data management, data protection, user experience of various user groups, process simplification, tests, communication of system knowledge, establishment of help desks, and the marketing of new applications.
The topic of data analytics will also become more important. Will we learn to understand what causes absenteeism to rise sharply at various locations and what preventive actions we can take to counter this rise? Will we understand the success factors for newly hired employees so that we can integrate them ideally in our company right from the beginning? Will we be able to discern in good time whether an employee is ready for the next step in her development and offer her attractive prospects before she decides to begin looking around the job market?
We need employees, especially in recruiting, who can use social media channels, build up a positive corporate image, and interact with potential candidates.
Will HR, finance, or financial controlling positions still be needed in the future, or will the boundaries between these areas become blurred so that there will be a greater demand for generalists with big data expertise? What will continue to be the focal points for HR in such a scenario?
I am convinced that an HR department will still be needed – a department that takes care of the interests of employees. Generalists will also be welcome in this department as long as the focus is always on employees and the department acts as an advocate for employees. Purely technical skills are not adequate even for reporting or analysis of HR data. It is important to be able to analyze and interpret data correctly. Other areas such as coaching and personnel development will come to a halt as well without an HR department.
How do I as a company and as the Deutsche Post DHL Group as well make sure that I attract the most talented people to the organization and keep them here?
The most talented people base their search on the triad of reasonable remuneration, good prospects, and a challenging, meaningful activity. We are a global company that operates in more than 220 countries around the world. The global exchange of goods joins people worldwide. We are market leaders in logistics and stand for excellence and innovation in our industry. We are characterized by a can-do corporate culture, making us an attractive employer. Our division DHL Express, for instance, was named the eighth-best employer in the entire world by Place to Work® and FORTUNE in 2017.
How do you deal with the general trend toward accelerating automation, but, when it is a matter of employees, the demand for greater individualization?
I am not so sure that there is really a trend to greater individualization. More than ever before, the primary emphasis in daily work and during projects is on the team concept. It is certainly true that employees want to be heard personally and appreciated for their contribution. It is equally true that employees are demanding greater freedom, especially with respect to the arrangement of their working hours and their place of work.
How do you deal with the creation of individual working environments in the international context?
We rely here completely on local regulations. At our headquarters, we have just concluded a so-called digital pact that supports mobile working, i.e., working at a site chosen by employees themselves away from their regular workplaces.
Diversity in conjunction with high-performing teams is currently the subject of massive discussion in the professional world. Internationally operating companies in particular have a large pool to draw on when choosing their experts. How do you deal with this, and how do you support it?
The diversity of our workforce is a special strength for us as a global corporation that operates in more than 220 countries around the world. Our organization brings together people from many different cultures and cultural backgrounds – with the most widely varying skills, experience, and viewpoints imaginable. We are proud of this diversity and are convinced that this diversity makes us so successful. We are investing a lot of energy in heightening awareness of this even further.
Recognizing and encouraging talented people is becoming increasingly important in this age of digitalization; how exactly do you achieve this?
We see the recognition and encouragement of talented people as a joint task of employees, managers, and HR. We have established systematic processes during which we regularly interact with managers and ask them who on the team has the potential to take the next step and what target role might be a good fit. We also call on our employees to assume responsibility for their own careers. We maintain an internal platform where employees can clearly designate the next rung on their career ladder that interests them specifically.
When you look at the HR department: What will be your primary topics in the next 3 to 5 years?
High on the list is continuing to develop our employees and preparing them for the digital world by means of tailored learning programs. In addition, we need to create more efficient and effective people processes through data management, user-friendly IT applications, and interface management. And third, we must drive forward the use of new technologies, new communication and collaboration tools, and social media to promote in particular talent sourcing, employee engagement, and cultural transformation.
Ms. Walther, thank you for this fascinating interview!
This interview was conducted by Marc Wagner.
