In times of increasing digitalization, organizations and human resources managers are looking for new ways to optimize work across departments, countries and even continents. More and more organizations realize that they need to move from old analogue working cultures based on assessment of individual performances to a more collaborative working environment in order to stay competitive and remain innovative. How can human resources departments become more flexible and enhance their processes? How can HR teams make sure that employees identify with the organization’s overall strategy?

In this session moderated by Nina Buschle, panelists Katharina Heuer, Chairman of the Management Board of the German Association for Personnel Management; Max Neufeind, Policy Advisor of the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs; and Sarah Glate, Industry Manager & CSI:Lab Facilitator at Google Germany discuss how human resources management can innovate by applying Design Thinking.

“Design Thinking helps to redefine HR itself and its impact on people and business.” – Katharina Heuer

For Katharina Heuer, a representative of more than 2,500 personnel managers in Germany, the fields of action for human resources are clear: creating flexible and individual working conditions and applying new, agile leadership and management strategies. Observing a shift in labor markets towards giving more power to employees, she believes that leaders need to let go of classic hierarchies and take on the role of coaches for their employees. Organizations should integrate Design Thinking as a holistic approach, an attitude allowing them to engage in more experiments and result-open processes with open-ended results.

In general, Katharina Heuer emphasizes, the power of smart people during the 4th industrial revolution should not be underestimated. And the loss of jobs should not be viewed as the biggest threat. Yes, machines will replace people, making production more efficient and giving organizations competitive advantages, but people will be crucial in establishing networks and creating other competitive advantages through their interactions and emotional intelligence. After all, only people can be entrepreneurs creating businesses and organizations, while at the same time making use of technological developments in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Creating experimental spaces

Compared to companies, the implementation of Design Thinking in political institutions is still quite rare. One of the first federal ministries in Germany that came across Design Thinking is the German Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. After Uli Weinberg, Director of the HPI D-School, met the minister and gave a keynote talk at a conference, the ministry was inspired and began a collaboration with the HPI Academy and HPI D-School. According to Policy Advisor Max Neufeind, one of the first things this cooperation inspired them to do, was to create an innovation space within the ministry. A safe place where people from different departments could come together to work on experimental innovation projects.

Sarah Glate of Google Germany agrees that creating innovation spaces is a great first step. However, she suggests “you need to ensure that the mindset created there is brought back into the company”. At Google they apply a human-centered hiring process and specifically look for people with a Design Thinking mindset – open, curious, customer-centric – without necessarily calling it that. The human resources department first checks all formal criteria for each applicant. Then the future “users” of these resources interview the applicant for the open position – from managers, to team members and colleagues from completely different departments. That way they test whether the applicant has the collaborative mindset prized at Google. The collaboration between colleagues and departments is an important part of the tech company’s culture. With its “g2g” community it encourages all employees to engage in peer-to-peer education and learning. Moreover, the company rewards collaboration with bonuses given to team rather than to individuals.

Strengthening the role of HR in advancing company cultures

While all of these developments and approaches show that human resources departments are moving towards change, all panelists and the audience agree that more can and needs to be done. Max Neufeind especially would like to see an HR-based social movement as he believes HR contributing to the purpose of a company will be critical going forward. To do so, HR’s contribution needs to be illustrated visually in facts and figures, taking advantage of the opportunity big data presents, Katharina Heuer suggests.