Future of Work: lessons learned from a roundtable with representatives from across Germany’s industries

The great thing about my startup MyCollective is that while we are the only player in quite a well-defined niche - working parents and parental leavers - we also work with partners from across a huge diversity of industries in Germany, from global food company 达能 , to aerospace giant Airbus , to automotive & industrial manufacturer 舍弗勒 , to skincare company 拜尔斯道夫 (which owns the brands NIVEA, Eucerin, and La Prairie.)

That variety is a huge source of inspiration and information when it comes to seeing what our industries are doing in the fields of diversity and inclusion - after all, our partners are all companies who want to implement positive change and improve diversity, even if they come from vastly differing industries.?

So when this year’s Münchner Management Kolloquium - one of Germany’s biggest economic congresses - gave me the opportunity to set up a roundtable to discuss the Future of Work, I jumped at the chance and reached out to a cross-section of our MyCollective partners to ask if they would join me on stage to talk about challenges and solutions in an open forum.

The challenges are hard to ignore. The shortage of skilled labour in Germany has been estimated to cost us 86 billion Euro per year in lost GDP ( 波士顿谘询公司 , 2022). At the same time, we’re nowhere near gender parity - 66% of mothers work part-time, compared to just 7% of fathers ( Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis) , 2022), and in Germany’s top 200 companies, the proportion of women on Boards of Directors is just 15.6% (Statista, 2022).?

To me, those figures show the extent of the problem - but also ways we could solve it. That’s why MyCollective works with people on parental leave, because that's the time when companies are most likely to lose their talents, and when parents - particularly mothers - are most likely to take a step back, questioning their ability to compete for leadership positions after they’ve been on an extended baby-break.?

Many of the companies we work with also recognise this. “It's exactly the right moment to invest in your talents,” said Anke Graf , HR lead at 英飞凌 . "They come back stronger from parental leave, take on leadership positions and become role-models for others. How else should we fulfil diversity quotas if we don’t promote people like them? And in order for us to be able to promote them, they have to have the support they need, and their child-care and home-life has to be managed too. It’s all connected.”?

Katharina Herrmann , who sits on the Board of Directors at Hubert Burda Media , agrees. “It's not enough to put a kindergarten in the building,” she says. “It we’re talking about Future of Work / New Work properly, we need to look at questions like - how do parents organise themselves? How can we be more attractive to working parents? It’s time we understood that managing family life is actually part of talent management.”?

Companies benefit from that too. “We want higher earnings and more innovation,” says Katja Ploner , Corporate D&I adviser at 西门子 - “and we can’t get there with homogenous teams. They need to be diverse. And to attract talent as an employer in this day and age, you have to show that you run a diverse business.”?

Sandra Westermann founded her startup, Superheldin | Das Jobboard für weibliche Talente , specifically to help female talents find those diverse and family-friendly businesses post-parenthood. “Being open to change as a business is super important,” she says - “as is offering flexible working models to your people. It costs less to adapt and keep them, than to lose people and have to start again.”?

Nicole Knaack , who was D&I Lead at Schaeffler and now holds the same position at HHLA Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG , has seen this happen. “There are plenty of statistics on this topic,” she says, “but managers really start to feel it when they see their teams shrink because people just have better offers elsewhere. So in the end, everyone has a pain-point!”?

Getting men on board is important too, says event manager Hans Reitz . “We have to stop talking about “motherhood," and instead talk about “parenthood,”” he says. “That creates space for fathers to step up and take on more parental responsibilities too, which is a really important step.”?

In the end, it’s about improving quality of life for everyone. That means more opportunities for fathers to participate in their children’s lives. More opportunities for mothers to take on challenging and fulfilling roles without guilt or worry. And more opportunities for businesses to work outside the rigid frameworks of traditional working models. “The lack of skilled labour is a massive opportunity,” says Infineon’s Anke Graf. “You can use it to define your working conditions and ask for what you need so that you can perform to the best of your ability and be successful.”

This is how a shortage of talents becomes an opportunity for success. And an opportunity to create a better and more flexible future of work - together.?