More important than ever to navigate the world around us

Klicka h?r f?r att l?sa kr?nikan p? svenska

I hope you have all enjoyed a wonderful Midsummer weekend with your loved ones. Many of us are now looking forward to some much-needed time off. To spend time with loved ones, replenish our energy and to get some time to think. We need to reflect on what is happening in the world around us, how best to equip ourselves for an exciting and challenging autumn and how we can evaluate and set our own goals in terms of personal leadership.

Spring 2022 has been one none of us will forget. For many of us, this is the first time we are experiencing a war so close to home. It has been a time when our colleagues, family and friends have been affected, both personally and more indirect. Tragically, it is a war that has now been going on for over four months, continuing to cause tragedy for many fellow human beings. At the same time, this has proven to be a time of unity, determination, and solidarity for a shared conviction that all people have a right to freedom. Where we have seen the EU and global leaders make courageous decisions in support of Ukraine. It brings hope for the future.

Capgemini globally, as well as in Sweden, has had strong results in the first six months of the year. We have grown with 880 consultants in all areas of expertise, especially in technology heavy roles, engineering, data, and management consultants. In Sweden, we have seen robust growth in all industries, especially strong in the automotive industry, the manufacturing industry, and telecom.

Being a company in the consulting industry, we see that it is more important than ever to stay close to customers in order to understand how we can support them in matters such as finding and hiring people with diversified skills?– securing both regional supply of skills and achieving global scalability – help our customers scaling up and down faster depending on market demand – and how to provide continued advice and support for our customers digitalisation agenda and the transition it brings.

Digitalisation and data accelerating – with sustainability in focus

We keep seeing continued strong demand in the entire digitalisation area, especially for data, cloud, and security services. This spring has shown that customers are seriously starting to use data in more strategic ways, using it to make business decisions. I am especially proud to see our consultants deliver solutions that help customers achieve their sustainability goals. We have seen good examples in the automotive and engineering industries, where data is used in new ways to better understand the environmental impact of the entire supply chain. When sustainability enters the business calculations, it becomes truly clear that there are things that need to change to make operations more sustainable. I enjoy seeing this type of concrete results from our joint work.

Shared responsibility in terms of integration

Sustainability is not just about the environment. It is also about creating sustainable organizations and communities where future generations will have an opportunity to contribute to a positive development. One of today's biggest challenges is integration, and this has become particularly evident in Sweden over the past six months. Addressing this issue requires courageous decisions and investments by private and public actors. We must all contribute to making it easier for new Swedes with education to enter society and contribute. Capgemini Sweden is currently running an initiative to retrain people currently outside the labor market to become consultants in roles as developers, business analysts and testers.

In addition, we continue to work with the Swedish Public Employment Service on their important transformation journey, so they can take care of job seekers in a more efficient and accurate way, and to facilitate better matching between employees and employers for better results.

An understanding of diverse cultures is an essential part of achieving integration. I am proud to work for a company that works on these issues every day and that, ?for the tenth year in a row, has been named one of the world's most ethical companies. But we, like all companies today, must continue to work with inclusion and cultural diversity.

Let us not forget what the pandemic taught us

In my previous columns, I have reflected on the pandemic, our new hybrid way of working and what new demands and challenges it brings for us leaders. We are on this journey of change and the most important thing is not to forget all the things we have learned from the pandemic. For example, how to retain effective hybrid work and how to strike the balance between meeting physically and virtually to optimize creativity and innovation and to create strong bonds between members of the organization.

Today, I look forward to meeting colleagues, customers and partners in Almedalen. Capgemini is participating this year with a focus on Public Affairs. We cover three key areas that can contribute to creating an even stronger society: Sustainability – how companies can drive change through joint initiatives, Security – how companies must become even better at ensuring security, also for their own employees, Digitalisation of the public sector in Sweden – how the next steps of digitization can be achieved.

The events can be followed live via Offentlig Aff?rer's YouTube channel. Welcome!

Wishing you all a summer full of relaxation, time for reflection and recovery. Let us all spend some time on thinking about how we can continue to contribute to inclusion and a more sustainable integration in society!