New Work: People x Technology x Collaboration
Designing smart and valuable user experiences (UX) is one of the most essential elements of product and service development — across branches and industries.
But in the past, UX designers mostly addressed customers and partners. Most companies simply didn’t bother to think about other shareholders needs when using certain services. Gladly, this is changing now and me and my colleagues at the Porsche Digital Lab have the creative freedom to create new services and especially experiences for, well, ourselves: the staff working at Porsche Group. We widened our scope, started using innovative technologies to create new solutions, methods and processes in Human Ressources. Our goal is to elaborate on the questions what New Work means at Porsche and to find new ways that combine our traditions and core values with individual employee needs and room for innovation.
As a part of that, we initiated the Open Innovation Project “New Work” together with HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management and Code University in March. Students from both institutes worked on innovative concepts solving real challenges within the company, bringing together both a management and an engineering perspective. At the end of the process, the three finalist teams had the opportunity to pitch their ideas in front of an expert jury:
● Stephan Stubner, Dean at HHL,
● Julia Derndinger, coach for founders and startups,
● Petra Meyer, HR enthusiast and coach at The Dive,
● Robert Martin, Project Manager at Porsche Digital Lab and working alongside APX, the joint accelerator programme of Axel Springer and Porsche,
● and my colleague Anja Hendel, Director of Porsche Digital Lab.
Stop being scared and start being curious
The student’s solutions ranged from a “Digital Coach”, that supports managers in their learning journey on topics of New Work and Leadership, and a flexible “pick and choose” Employee Benefits System to a software solution for more efficient meetings. All those ideas showed how broad the topic of New Work is, how it affects each and every employee — and how intelligent tech can help to tackle some of the challenges we are facing as large corporation. What surprised me most was how bold some of the projects were: The students did not try to repair certain aspects of existing processes, but developed new solutions from the ground up, even though the tasks we gave them were quite complex. They all worked together in the spirit of jury member Petra Meyer, who called on the students with the words: “Fear is not helpful. Stop being scared and start being curious!”
For the jury, the hardest part of the day began: Their decision was made in favor of “BetterMeet”, a tool for better structured, prepared and time-saving meetings — a solution that is not only tailored to the needs of Porsche, but that could help most organisations on the planet. Besides much praise all students won a model car of the Porsche 911 and a go on the test track in Leipzig. The winners additionally had the opportunity to pitch again on our FirstTuesday, Porsche Digital Lab and MHPLab host every first Tuesday of the month.
New Work is not just about looks
Afterwards, Code University co-founder Jonathan Rueth showed us what New Work looks like at Factory Berlin, and that is pretty impressive. Yes, of course, the ball pit is kind of a Berlin cliché, but we could really feel the creative spirit and open-mindedness that comes with a working environment like that.
It comes as no surprise that Code University is located there as well. Their approach on teaching is quite unique and prepares students for a transformed working world: Studying there is quite different from “regular” universities — students learn in practice-oriented projects and learn how to find their own ways, without learning theoretical concepts by heart for good grades in written exams. That means Code University students learn a lot about self-management, really pervading problems and, of course, coding. In my opinion, these are all highly relevant skills for the working world of tomorrow, that foster a mindset for lifelong learning and innovation.
New things can’t be squeezed in old patterns
That’s exactly what we talked about at our FirstTuesday, organized by MHP, on “New Work”. Five speakers shared their views on the topic and showed how companies tackle this challenge:
- According to Saskia Grossmann, HR at VW, the greatest challenge of the future will be to figure out a way to fulfil every special need the employees have.
- AI supported service bots could be the future of new work to reduce and speed up processes, as my colleague Nikolaj Waller, Data Scientist at Porsche Digital Lab, showed us.
- A great team is essential for the success of the project. For this reason iCombine, developed a SaaS that helps companies to quickly find the best fitting colleagues to setup a team.
- New Work can’t be squeezed in old patterns. That’s why Sara-Lena Eisermann from Tandemploy is convinced that flexibility is not only necessary to establish new software but also in the transformation of working structures.
- The family have to be doing well in order to work freely. Tech gives the opportunity to support this believing. The Skoda Auto DigiLab supports the project CareDriver, which provides mobility services e.g to elderly people.
For me, the most important insight was that New Work means to break away from old patterns. It requires free thinking and open-mindedness, because it often entails finding new paths and not knowing the destination. Of course, this does not mean that we have to throw all traditions and values overboard — new solutions must always fit the corporate identity and the needs of the employees. But we can only really use the potential of new technologies and digitization for the working world to face existing problems if we are prepared to critically analyze structures and rethink processes holistically.
Work with us on New Work
At the Porsche Digital Lab, collaboration is one of the things we firmly believe in. Sharing experiences and knowledge is a catalyst for new ideas and innovation. That’s why we’d like to gather more thoughts on New Work with a series of guest contributions from creative minds and experts here on our Medium Blog — to discuss different approaches, bring great ideas to a larger audience and, of course, to learn from each other. Stay tuned!
Many thanks to the students from HHL Leipzig, Code University, our great jury and FirstTuesday speakers. It was a blast!
Judith Gabbert works as a User Experience Expert in the Porsche Digital Lab and acts as an interface between the needs of the user, the technological possibilities of the Porsche ideas laboratory and the professional requirements of the Porsche Group.
In her role as User Experience Expert, it is Judith’s job to identify the needs of the users and their expectations for a product or service. Her aim is to work together with the Lab team as well as colleagues from all Porsche departments and future users to develop holistic concepts that meet the challenges of each problem while creating the best possible experience for the user with the aid of new technology. Judith’s work in this area includes managing ideation in the Lab, developing concepts and testing these concepts with users.
