Shadowing Practice: WORK - HRM Lecture 08 - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Okay, let's start.
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Work.
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At the beginning of each chapter, I highlight some main questions,
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some leading questions, which we're going to answer during this particular chapter.
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What characterizes modern work?
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What is modern work?
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What is traditional work, old work?
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And what will be the future of work?
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I will outline that work was dramatically changing.
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Work in the past was something where we went to.
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We had a workplace and then we worked, and then we went home, stopped working.
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It's totally changing.
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In many areas, not in all all areas, but in many areas it's really changing.
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And in this part I would like to talk with you about the balance between work and the private life.
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We used to differentiate between these two different worlds, right?
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We have the work and we have friends and family, sports, religion, private things.
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How do these things relate to each other
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and how can companies make sure that these two things fit
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because there are some reasons why companies should take care for the balance of work and private life of their people.
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In this context, working hours really, really matters, Arbeitszeit.
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Yeah?
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Okay?
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After we have talked about work, We talk about a very special concept in HR which is the employee survey.
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Employee surveys always were there to ask the people how satisfied are you with your work
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and the environment and how can we change, what can we do to improve it.
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We're going to talk about this in more detail, how it works, why it does not always work,
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and what are alternatives that could work.
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And one concept in this context is really the employer attractiveness, Arbeitgeberattraktivität.
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There are companies out there where you would love to work
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and there are companies out there where you could never imagine to work.
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Okay, think about it.
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What in your eyes, what is the difference between an attractive employer and a non-attractive employer?
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So a question for companies really, how can I improve strategically the attractiveness of us as employer?
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Okay, so these are the main questions.
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My promise, we're going to answer these questions and you should be able as well.
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So what's this?
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time recording.
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Very traditional.
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Question to you, why is it there?
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You know how this works.
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The people, the workers come here, they pick their card, they get a stand, and then they put this card in here,
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and then they go to work, and then they go home, they pass by again from the other direction, to take their card.
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At the end of the day, the HR professional pass by and takes all the cards and put it into a system.
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Why is it there?
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For their pay, so that you know how much they work.
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OK, there is one answer.
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For their pay, you can see how much they work.
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Indeed.
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And they always start at the same time.
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Even though in companies where the people start in the morning 7.30 until,
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let's say, 4.15, even though they have always very fixed working hours, they have this.
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You can see whether they were there and showed up to work.
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Okay, you can check whether they were there. On time.
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time.
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Question to you, what would happen if a company would totally get rid of this?
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Would they don't show up?
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Would they don't start working on time?
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Wouldn't we know whether they are there?
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Think about this.
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Yeah, they get the feeling that there somehow is a control on them
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and people still think that this is necessary to control people somewhere.
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We're gonna talk about this.
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We're gonna talk about this.
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Is it required to control the people?
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Is it required to check whether they are there?
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We will find that there are companies which never had something like this at all.
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I worked in a company called SAP.
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We never had something like this.
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Never.
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We just started when we wanted to.
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Now, as a professor, I don't have something like this.
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That's why I was not on time this morning.
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I was there, right?
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Let's have a totally different perspective on this.
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There was once a study which dealt with one significant question.
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And the question was, where do people have their best ideas?
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Why are ideas so important?
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Simple.
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Because of innovation.
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Innovative companies, the companies that differentiate themselves against their competitors through innovation.
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They need one thing, they need ideas.
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The interesting question is, where do people get their ideas?
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What do you think?
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Somewhere where there comes people at home or I don't know. At home?
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That's not work.
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Well, I don't know.
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I'd say if you work in a job where you have to be in an audit
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and where you have to come up with ideas, You usually should enjoy your work and you usually think about working yourself.
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Okay, very good.
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I once read that the best ideas come to mind in the morning after getting up
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and at night if you're already in bed, I probably appreciate it.
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In the morning when you get up.
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Yeah, in the very first minute hour of the day and in the last hour of the day.
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Yeah. In the shower.
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Yeah, when you do sports.
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Yeah, when you run through the wood, when you drive the car.
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But sorry, if all this is true, I mean that's outside of work or what we would define as work, right?
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Let's share some results.
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People have good ideas, as you said, in nature, while hiking, at home, during watching TV.
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You watch TV?
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Oh yes.
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Hobbies, spare time, sport, business travel, during holiday, vacation.
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And the red ones are those which are related somehow to work, at the workplace, 4%, 4% only.
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In interesting meetings, 6%.
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In boring meetings, 10%.
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When I show this slide to some companies, to managers, I say, now you know why you do these boring meetings.
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During breaks or while using creativity techniques.
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I mean, what do I want to show you with this?
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The most important things companies need at least in those companies where innovative innovation matters are ideas
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and people are paid for their ideas but the best ideas were created outside something what we name work.
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Let's think about this.
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We could add some more things here that the most successful songs in rock Rock history were created where and when?
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During sleep.
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Not while they were drunk.
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They were always drunk.
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But while they slept.
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What are the most successful songs in the world?
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Yes, Dare We to Heaven,
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Chalentine, Yesterday of the Beatles, Satisfaction of the Stones were created during sleep.
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So Paul McCartney in the night, he dreamed this song and then he woke up and said, oh what a great song.
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He wrote it down and then went back to sleep.
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Keith Richards wrote satisfaction while he slept.
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Kind of sleep.
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I had this idea of this Incredible riff and...
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Interesting, eh?
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Okay, so what I want to say here is that what.. this is what matters.
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I mean, this is something that companies more and more learn that if you want to have ideas
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then you should shape spaces,
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flexibility, rooms, times where people are so comfortable that they have their best ideas.
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So when we look at this, what is the impact on human resource management when we talk about working hours?
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If we really accept this and...
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So you can only pay the people when they are at the workplace, you rather should maybe pay them for ideas?
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You should pay them for the idea and should not take care about working hours.
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It's not about the presence, it's about the ideas.
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Absolutely.
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I would like to show you a very simple idea here.
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In the past, and I try to put it a little bit to extreme,
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In the past, people went to work because you had a machine where you had to work.
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You went there in the morning.
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You worked at the machine at a definite time span.
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And then you left the machine, went home and you stopped working because work was related to this place.
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What you will do in your work, in your career, are two things.
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You will think and communicate.
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Think and communicate.
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These are the two things which you're going to do.
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Maybe some of you will work with their hands, but most of you will work primarily with their brain.
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Think and communicate.
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Where can you think and communicate?
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Everywhere.
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That's the right answer.
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Everywhere.
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And that's a new phenomenon that work is no more linked to a physical space,
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to a physical location.
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So the term I go to work becomes more and more meaningless.
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Work is not something where you go to.
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Work is something that you do.
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You can think and communicate everywhere.
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It's not something which is related to a very concrete location.
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In the past you always worked with the same people in a very fixed, static organization.
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In your career, you're gonna work with the people in your organization with which you like to work.
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With those people where it makes sense to collaborate.
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Okay?
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And you will hopefully, depending on how modern your employer gonna be,
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you will work whenever you like to work.
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Yeah?
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Okay?
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So, in the past, it was really focused on this one single point.
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Static organization at one fixed location at fixed working hours.
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In the future, we have more and more rooms where you have flexible working hours, flexible locations, flexible organizations.
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Okay, so as I said the term I go to work on time becomes meaningless.
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Now you might think that,
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you might think that, yeah but if I work in a warehouse at Lidl and I work there as a cashier,
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I mean that's my workplace and I have to be there on time and I always work with the same people.
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Right.
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For many, many jobs it's clear that you only can work at one specific location,
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only specific clearly defined times.
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What I just want to say is that we have more and more jobs, at least in the Western industries, where it's about to think and to communicate.
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More and more.
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This part is growing.
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So for more and more jobs, this model is going to apply.
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Here is the question.
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That was the point.
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Yeah?
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But still, if you have a lot of, for example, in retail, you have a lot of people working at Kashus.
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So I don't know.
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Absolutely.
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Retail, banking, in the service area.
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A lot of travel.
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If you are a pilot, sorry, you have to be in time, you have to play.
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How do you motivate people to come in time?
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They have schedules, right?
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In some areas, they simply have schedules.
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It makes sense.
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Also, it's sometimes a mixture.
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I have no working hours.
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I'm totally flexible.
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My last book I wrote in the night.
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Six weeks, every night from 10 to 2.
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Because I wanted to.
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When I do lecture, I have to be there at this moment, at this place.
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You know?
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We have both.
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But this flexible world is more and more place, more and more significant room.
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Okay?
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So let's talk about working hours in more detail.
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When we talk about working hours, we also talk about working hours models.
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What is a working hour model?
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A working hour model, Arbeitszeitmodell, a working hour model describes how much you work, when you work, okay?
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And how flexible you are when using your work time.
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So it's all about duration, position, it's about volume, how much you work, it's about the flexibility.
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So what you see on this slide, it's a very simple scheme.
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This is one week from Monday to Friday.
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And these are the hours to the day.
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And now you might have, here these different boxes are the hours which you work.
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So the model describes simply, okay, I have a volume of hours which I spend with the company in a week.
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Could be 40 hours, 35, 20.
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This is one point, one dimension.
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How much do you work?
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The second dimension is how are these working hours distributed across the week and across the different daytime?
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And maybe you have some hours where you have to be there from 10 to 5
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and the rest can be handled in flexible terms except Friday.
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If you like, you can leave on Friday in the afternoon.
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So, the rest is flexible.
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Okay?
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So, and this is a work, this is a working time model.
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Okay?
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And this is what we have in companies, described for the people, saying, okay, this is your volume,
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this is how I distribute it during the week, and this is, this is the amount of flexibility which you have.
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Now, question to you, and this relates now to your point.
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When we talk about working hour models,
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when we think about how much somebody should work,
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and we think about how flexible working hours can be, what must we take into consideration?
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I have an employee here, burned.
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The question is what is his working model, working hours model?
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What is appropriate?
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What makes sense?
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What must we take into consideration?
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What kind of business you are in?
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the business, the industry.
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Why does it matter?
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You have an idea in mind?
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Retail, different business, maybe IT, travel, bank, higher education.
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Absolutely, it depends on the business.
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What else?
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The level of output we need.
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Level of output?
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What do you think?
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For example, if we are a manufacturer, we want to know how many cars, for example, we produce and if the company is...
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Yeah, depends on the demand.
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Right, on the demand requirements.
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I want you to produce so many pieces a day because there is demand outside.
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Right, absolutely.
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So what's the requirement of the job, requirement of the industry?
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I think it also depends on the kind of position or job that you do within your...
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Yes, it depends on the job.
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What is a job?
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A set of responsibilities, and some responsibilities require specific working hours.
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Absolutely.
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Now, what we talk now, and this is interesting, is we talk mainly about the job.
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Do you see this?
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what are the requirements?
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What is needed to do this job well?
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But we have to add some other points.
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So, the expectation of the people.
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Yeah?
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I mean, in a couple of years, you will become fathers, mothers,
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you're gonna have kids, family, yeah?
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And okay, you say, I would like to work less.
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I would like to have more flexibility so that I can pick up my children at kindergarten.
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I don't want to have this conflict between my kids and work.
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So you expect flexibility, you expect a certain amount of working hours, it's both, yeah?
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So, So here is a very simple idea here.
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The requirements of the job, this is where you focused on, right?
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Specific jobs need specific working hours models.
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If you are a cashier, you have to be there at a specific time.
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Okay, if you are an R&D, a scientific worker, R&D specialist, okay, we can have much more flexibility.
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If you are an author or journalist, professor, You can have total flexibility.
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If you are a pilot, you have to work less.
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If you are, you have to work more.
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So it depends on the job, and it's simple, right?
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But what you added is even important.
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Individual preferences.
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What are my values?
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What is my private background?
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What are my expectations?
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And then there is leadership culture.
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forget this leadership culture working hours are very closely related to the leadership culture we just said now
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when we talked about this traditional working hour recording system it's
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about controlling people yeah we have I use this working hour tracking working hour recording to control my people to to
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to track my people, to see whether they are in time, whether they are there.
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And all this has something to do with trust.
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If you work in a company where leadership is simply trusting the people, saying you have to do the job, I don't care when you do this job,
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I just take care that you're going to deliver the results.
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And it's up to you when you work.
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This is a level of trust and this has to do with leadership culture.
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There are companies out there where the leaders,
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managing directors, the executives could never ever imagine to have flexible working hours because they don't trust their people.
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So this really matters.
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What is the leadership culture in a company?
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And then of course, we haven't mentioned this, labor law.
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In Germany, as a company, I cannot expect my people to work 50 or 60 hours in a week.
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I can't.
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Okay?
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There is a limited amount of hours which I can work on overtime, whatever that is.
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Okay?
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I mean, labor law is something, sometimes in a conflict with what I want to do in a company.
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So this is a different story, this is false smile, right?
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I just want to see that there are different factors and what you should take home is that there are two,
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at least two main trials.
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The one thing is the job related requirements and the individual preferences.
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So what would you say?
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Which parts, requirements versus individual preferences,
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which will gain more power in in the future.
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I think if you're in an industry where you have a talent shortage
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or if you are in a job where you have a talent shortage, the individual preferences will gain more important questions.
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Absolutely.
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The company has to see how it feels with the requirements it has.
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Very good.
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Talent shortage.
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If you have a talent shortage, if you struggle in finding good people, you have to take care for the preferences of the people.
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If you don't have a talent shortage, you simply don't care.
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When we talk about working hour models, there are very different approaches.
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I don't want to talk too much about these different things.
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Fixed working hours, part-time work, the German Kurzarbeit, during recession,
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during crisis, companies can reduce the working hours and get support by government.
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To really increase flexibilities for the companies in times of crisis.
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Flex time, trust-based working hours.
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They don't have a working hour model at all all.
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Yeah.
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Like companies like SAP, they don't have any working hour models.
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It's simply that you say you work 40 hours a week.
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We don't care when we don't track how much.
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Okay.
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Flexible annual working time.
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We have companies like, yeah, in Stuttgart, there is a company like It's called Trumpf.
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Every two years, every two years each and every employee, whether in production or in management,
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every employee can decide every two years how many hours they want to work in a week.
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And they are free in deciding this.
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If I say as an employee, now I want to work 24 hours, then it's fine.
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Two years later I can say, I would like to work more.
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I do.
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My dad works in this company and it feels very comfortable to have this free will somehow.
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People love it and it works.
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Thank you.
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So it's true what I say.
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Part-time work, you know what that is, working 50%, 20 hours a week maybe.
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So, from an academic point of view, I just want you to take home this reference,
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that one thing is always about working time autonomy.
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That is really a key dimension whenever we talk about working our models,
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the flexibility, Arbeitszeit, Souveränität in German, working hours, flexibility.
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And the other thing is the reference with regards to, is it related to a day?
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What is the working hour?
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In a day, in a week, in the month, in the year, or in my life, okay?
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We also could talk about working hours during the life, right?
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So, work-life balance.
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Now, what does that mean?
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Now, we talked about work, working hour, flexibility.
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Now, when you think about work-life balance, I mean, you have heard this term already.
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What comes to your mind when you think about work-life balance?
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Oh.
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Work?
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Huh?
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Yeah?
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I think it should be a pretty fold graphic
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because there is too much time to do
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that there is too much time that you don't really know what to spend on them, it's a loss of time.
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So I think the job should really...
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I think Google is a good example of that, trying to support their employees offering different fitness facilities
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or different washing facilities where you can wash your clothes and stuff like that.
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So you just feel your time around the company.
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I think being young it's about that.
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Okay, good, good.
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Companies like Google come to our mind, Microsoft.
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They offer things around work.
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It's not only that you have your computer or your laptop and your office, whatever that is.
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You have space where you can do sports.
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You have additional services and all this stuff, right?
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Yeah.
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So things besides work, pure work, which is added by the company.
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Yeah, of course.
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I have found one quote, which I really found the best.
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And I don't share too many quotes in my lecture, but there was one quote by the former CEO of Coca-Cola.
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He put work-life balance really to the point.
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I love it.
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It's here.
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Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air.
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They are work, family, health, friends, and spirit, and you're keeping all of these in the air.
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You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball.
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If you drop it, it will bounce back, but the other four balls, family, health, friends and spirit, are made of glass.
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If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even scattered.
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They will never be the same.
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You must understand that and strive for it.
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Work efficiently during office hours and leave on time.
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Give the required time to your family, friends and have proper rest.
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value has a value only if its value is valued.
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I mean that's perfect.
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It's a good picture to tell work-life balance is not only something that is that is managed by the company,
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it's not only something which is which needs to be allowed by the company through working our models.
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Work-life balance in many in many situations,
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especially in flex time, is something that relates to the responsibility of the people.
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You know what happens if you totally get rid of any working hour recording,
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if you have total flex time, trust-based, what happens?
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Will the people work more or less?
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I guess people will work more efficiently because if I'm not productive now in the morning, maybe I'm more productive at night.
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They work more, they work more efficiently.
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And that's exactly the point.
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You work when you have the power for doing it.
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Maybe in the evening after you brought your kids to bed.
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If you pay the people for just being there, I mean they are surrounded by a lot of alternatives.
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I sometimes talk to managers and they complain saying, you know what my people do at work?
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They serve in Facebook during work.
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And that's why I forbid people to use the internet during work.
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Because if they have access to the internet, they start looking at Facebook.
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I mean, what's the point?
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Yeah, you know, in most toilets and companies,
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you could put a tag on it.
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Corporate internet cafe.
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Yeah, because the people went there.
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Because they have their internet in their pocket.
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And if they want to check Facebook they go to the toilet. Or smoke.
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And that's ridiculous.
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The point is that when you are at work, and work means be there, you have to spend your time there, that's for what you paid for.
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And there are some alternatives what you can do during your time.
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You can communicate with your friends.
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You will communicate with your friends if you are paid for what you deliver.
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The question is, do I waste my time with Facebook or do I deliver what I'm paid for?
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I mean, that's the point.
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I have a question.
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If you completely get rid of all time reporting methods and everything, doesn't that also involve the risk of a company using that to let you work more?
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I mean, if a company says you have 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week to, I don't know, produce a pencil, I don't know.
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And you need 40 hours to assemble a pencil, and then you would finish.
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And now they get rid of all time recording methods, and then they say, okay, now produce two pencils.
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You can do it whenever you want, wherever you want, just give us two pencils at the end of the week.
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And now suddenly you need 80 hours of work, and we can manage to do it.
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This is about target setting.
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This is about objective setting.
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What is appropriate and what I expect from my people.
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And that's a process of, let's say, negotiation.
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Isn't the risk rather high that companies will use the flexibility to their own benefit?
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Because it's a very good way to save money and...
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Yeah, of course, of course.
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You say, well, I don't care about your working hours, I take care about what you deliver
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and this is what I want you to deliver
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and this target might be set so high that you must work more than 40 hours.
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Yes, that risk is absolutely there.
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Absolutely.
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And you'll find this in some industries.
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Let's think about the professional service industry.
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That people work 80 hours a week.
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Because it's not expected to work so much.
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But it's expected that they produce the outcome.
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Absolutely.
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I would agree.
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That's why, by law, I have to add this, by law, you have to track working hours.
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It depends how you do it.
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Do you do it in this traditional way or in very simple terms?
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Is it that the people are asked to write down their working hours somehow?
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That's fine.
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But by law, you should.
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I know many, many, many companies that don't and never had a problem.
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Okay?
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So, from a legal point of view, it's not so easy.
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Okay?
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So, I just said that when we talk about working hour models,
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we primarily talk about how is the total volume of working hours distributed throughout a week.
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Okay?
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But there are different reference frames.
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We can also talk about working hours throughout a life.
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And that was kind of vague, abstract, you know.
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What we have here really is that we find significant changes at work.
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To put it really extreme, in the past we had something like this.
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You learned, you worked, and then you retire.
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Learn, work, private.
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You put it very simple.
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Mirrors somewhere here, between here and here, between the second layer and the third layer.
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From the top, in the second layer you see more current approach.
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Saying, okay, I learn, study, school, study, then I work,
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and then I do my master, yeah, and then I work work and then I have a sabbatical.
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I mean this idea is quite new.
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Twenty years ago we didn't talk about sabbatical.
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And then we work and then again a kind of educational phase.
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And what we find in the future and that's quite clear
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and this is commonly understood in the industry is that you're going to have what we also name a patchwork life plan.
484
It's very individual.
485
Saying, okay, I'm burned and I learn
486
and during my study I already start to work
487
and then I work full time and then I do my master and then I work part-time.
488
And then I do a kind of action education, part-time, I take care for the kids, my wife is working more,
489
and then I work full-time, and then I work half-time, and learn.
490
And this is going to be different from person to person.
491
If 20, 30 years ago in the chairman industry, if somebody would have shown up at the HR director saying,
492
I I want this, I want that, I want this.
493
The HR director might have said, sorry, but no way.
494
Go to Google.
495
Today it's different.
496
Today it's different.
497
Companies learn that they have to take care about the preferences of their people.
498
And in many situations, there are no reasons why people should not work part-time.
499
So this kind of flexibility over the life, this is not the weekly flexibility, this is the flexibility which you have in your life plan,
500
this is also something which becomes more and more important.
501
That's especially true because during the life your preferences will change.
502
Your preferences will change.
503
I have a picture here which shows that to a certain extent.
504
I divide life into five different phases.
505
This is a professional perspective.
506
Five phases, this is not scientifically proven.
507
And I know there are different models out there, but this model works best with me.
508
Not me personally, but for my thinking.
509
I think there are five phases.
510
Learn, grow, decide, lead, share.
511
In the beginning, you had a child, in the beginning of your profession,
512
I mean this is not the age of zero, this is not birth, this is the start of your career, right?
513
So when we, I must correct myself, when we talk about life, you have some phases before learn, right?
514
Okay, so when you start working you will learn.
515
Okay, you work, it's clear.
516
You learn.
517
The first few years are there.
518
Learning is one of the key things you do when you work.
519
You learn.
520
And so at this time you gain your first professional experiences.
521
At the first years you still think about what What is right for me?
522
Should I really work in the retail industry?
523
Is travel industry the right thing for me?
524
Do I really love to work in projects or would I love to work on things which are more regular?
525
So occupation orientation is still key at the beginning.
526
You test yourself.
527
What do I like?
528
What not?
529
And then there is a phase where you really build the foundation for your long term career.
530
I think when you are at the beginning 30, mids of 30, the point is,
531
are you identified as a high potential, yes or no?
532
Are you among the top 10% people in the company which get the fullest support or are you somewhere in the middle?
533
happens in this phase.
534
When you're 30, 35, and 20.
535
So this is the phase where it's primarily about to grow.
536
It's more than learn.
537
Cognitive grow means really to boost the career, so to get more responsibility.
538
You get trust, you get more complicated tasks.
539
And then many of you, I mean you can drop out at any phase.
540
Already at this point some people still stick to the level for the rest of their life, but some others move to the next level,
541
say, I start to decide.
542
You do not decide when you join a company, when you start your career, you learn and you grow.
543
But then you come to a position where you have the responsibility to decide.
544
Why?
545
Because you become a manager or something.
546
You lead people.
547
You have to decide and you manage things.
548
If you do well over years, you come into a position where you start to lead.
549
And this is around 40.
550
It's around 40 where the main question for many people is
551
where can I find my position where I really get into a driver's seat either as a professor,
552
either as a partner, either as an executive or either as an entrepreneur and then I lead.
553
It's not only that I manage things, I lead.
554
I lead a company, I lead an organization, I lead through ideas.
555
I have reached a level of maturity, experience.
556
And then when I get older I probably will reduce my work more or less.
557
And then I start to share.
558
This is the phase where I use my, not only my knowledge or my experience, but I use my wisdom.
559
I use my wisdom to support younger people, other people.
560
I start working in some advisory boards.
561
And I'm the senior guy.
562
I don't work too much.
563
I just give my advice.
564
Okay, so, I mean, does that apply for each and every individual?
565
No, of course not.
566
But in my eyes, this is a reasonable path, this is a reasonable way to cut life into significant pieces.
567
And you will see that along with these different pieces also your private life is changing.
568
At the beginning of your career you might be totally independent because you're alone, you have a partner, you have a spouse, that's fine, you have party and everything.
569
But then, you marry maybe, I don't know, I don't care.
570
You start your family planning, you have kids, life changed dramatically when you have kids.
571
And this is for many people in the phase where you grow.
572
Career and kids.
573
When you grow further, divorce, family, but you have money.
574
You drive a big car, but you divorce.
575
And you decide.
576
Get further, your children are grown up, you become more and more independent.
577
You have aging parents.
578
You have to take care for your parents.
579
That's a totally new dimension in this phase.
580
And when you're older, again you have total autonomy.
581
Then health becomes a topic.
582
Health.
583
You have money and you take care for your handicap.
584
I put it really simple.
585
I put it really simple.
586
It's not that you learn these different boxes by heart and think that this is the truth.
587
My message is only that you follow different phases in your life and in different phases in your life,
588
different things are of more or less importance in your career and in your private life.
589
And things can significantly change.
590
So from a company side and this is the lower level.
591
HRM has to take care for very specific concepts.
592
Health management might not be so relevant for younger people.
593
Okay, the professionals in that area would not agree to this term. But, okay.
594
Having working time flexibility matters in very specific phases in your life when you have to take care for the kids,
595
when you have to take care for your parents.
596
But sorry, not when you're young or when you're alone, when you're single, when you're partying.
597
You have flexibility anyhow.
598
Okay?
599
So, the question is, what is the answer of HR to these different preferences and situations in life?
600
Okay?
601
Another concept which relates to here is Home Office Telework.
602
There is a little bit of mix-up with these terms internationally.
603
When we talk about home office in Germany, it means that maybe two days in a week, two days out of five, I work at home.
604
In some other countries, I'm not sure whether in the States, home office means that you really work at home.
605
Home office means you have to office at home.
606
And there was this huge, huge debate, you remember, with Yahoo,
607
where the CEO stopped allowing people working from home, saying, you have to come back.
608
Home office is really one of the key concepts also with regard to flexibility.
609
There are some pros and cons, and they are obvious.
610
I don't have to talk about these things in detail.
611
Of course, you can reduce costs.
612
You don't need to deliver a workspace for the person where he or she works at home.
613
You have this flexibility work-life balance and maybe higher productivity when you work at home because you can work when you like,
614
when it fits to your other things.
615
But the cons are if you work at home, I know it from For my person,
616
what happens when your kids always knock at your door?
617
Oh, Baba, I have to show you something.
618
Oh, no, not now.
619
I have to review the exams.
620
Okay.
621
Baba, I mean, you're here and here's television.
622
Yeah?
623
The separation of work and life.
624
For some people this is hard.
625
Sometimes it's good.
626
You really have the space between the work, the office and the private area and you have to drive a while.
627
So you have this distance geographically and mentally.
628
For some people it's important to have this physical separation.
629
The second point was the main reason why the CEO of Yahoo expected that people to come back into the office,
630
saying we want that in our company that people work together, they are connected, they exchange ideas, they talk to each other, they communicate.
631
That's why I want the people to work at one space.
632
That's what I mentioned before, risk of private disruptions.
633
I'm not always sure about the availability of people when they work at home.
634
I give them a call, oh, not there, maybe shopping, I don't know, try it in the evening.
635
When I see my colleague working in the office, I can simply pass by.
636
Poison cons, quite obvious.
637
Yeah, but I wanted to add this concept here.
638
Yeah, let me add one last thing today when we talk about work and work also relates to the physical workspace.
639
Question to you.
640
When you think about your future workspace,
641
Arbeitsplatz, your office, and I allow you to dream, yeah?
642
Think about my ideal office, my ideal workspace.
643
For a moment, think about it.
644
How does it look like?
645
Do you have an idea?
646
How does it look like?
647
Who would like to share his dream?
648
Is there somebody in the room saying, I don't need an office?
649
Yeah, you don't need an office.
650
I would love to just work on a computer or something because I can do it anywhere.
651
Yes, you can do it everywhere.
652
So like Accenture.
653
Do you know Accenture, a professional service firm?
654
You go there, you book a slot in the building saying, saying, oh, I would like to work there today.
655
I book this lot, I go there, I work.
656
You just have your laptop, nothing else.
657
I mean, what else do you need?
658
Do you need a, today I need a silent place, okay, I go to a silent place.
659
Ah, today I feel some kind of lonely, I'd like to work more closely to other people.
660
Okay, do so.
661
I can follow everybody saying, I don't need an office.
662
Who of you would say,
663
I need room by my own with a door and where I have my flowers,
664
my pictures, my pussy bear or what do you name it, kitty bear?
665
My pictures, plans.
666
Who of you would say this?
667
I need my office, which is shaped with my own interior.
668
Who would say this?
669
I have one.
670
I also have one.
671
My office.
672
It's my name tag.
673
Who of you would say I need both.
674
I need my own place, which is my place with my name tag,
675
but also I need some space where I just can meet other people whenever I want,
676
have a latte macchiato, talk about things, have some silent space where I can really escape from everything.
677
Who would like to say, who would say this?
678
That's the majority.
679
So this says you need have options, different spaces for whatever you'd like to do.
680
I mean, we know, and it's a very simple graph,
681
we know that there is this typical relation between physical distance,
682
yeah, physical distance and the probability of face-to-face communication.
683
We know this from science, we know that the curve is not linear, this is this way.
684
And that's again the reason why the CEO said we have to go back because the physical distance relates to the communication.
685
In our company we can only succeed if the people communicate to each other.
686
And we also know that the form a hierarchy.
687
The way we work together is in many companies reflected by the rooms,
688
by the space, and vice versa.
689
I mean if you have something like this here, the upper right hand side, the floor with the separated offices,
690
you will find these kind of offices in clearly hierarchical organizations.
691
Where in companies where it's more like a network, people work together in different shapes whenever they like.
692
You have more rooms like this on the bottom right hand side.
693
Rooms where people can meet and simply exchange.
694
In modern organizations you have both, like you find here on this picture.
695
You can hardly see what that means
696
but it's you have different different spaces you have offices yeah where you really
697
so this is home offices where you have to place yeah
698
but you also have spaces where you can meet in groups
699
social places is the so-called coffee corner yeah where the people sit together and not only drink coffee but exchange things.
700
They really think...
701
I was in a company called PraneLab.
702
PraneLab.
703
It's a company in Munich.
704
They're in the medical industry making software for medical industry.
705
Incredibly successful.
706
The CEO is five years younger than me.
707
Incredibly successful.
708
I was there and I really, I mean I worked at SAP, I don't like what a modern workspace is, but that was modern.
709
The coffee corner did not look like a coffee corner.
710
They looked like, I don't want to say kindergarten, but There was one coffee corner which was only sand, like an oasis.
711
You had to put up your shoes, you stepped through the sand, and there was this hengematte,
712
and this beach, typical furniture that you find in the beach.
713
Oh, my God.
714
Strandkorb.
715
So the people laid there and talked and asked, what do these people do there?
716
They work!
717
They exchange things, they communicate.
718
And this company is not such successful, even though they have this, they are successful because they have this.
719
So this is what we find more and more in companies,
720
that you have this combination of rooms where you can concentrate groups where you can meet others.
721
Very typical.
722
And one concept which is also dominant there is what we call hotelling.
723
Have you heard hotelling?
724
This is really the flexibility that you mentioned.
725
My company is a space of options.
726
I can go there and I can work wherever I like.
727
So today I would like to work at a silent place, today I would like to meet people, today I would like to have more conference, and then I book my space.
728
Now I just have my portal, and then I click where I want to work, then I go there.
729
Okay, that's hoteling.
730
Very new concept.
731
Today we know that we need, we need a little bit of home base,
732
yeah, combined with rooms where we can meet people.
733
And it more and more looks like this here on this picture, really, yeah.
734
Sometimes a little bit like kindergarten, but I mean that's fine.
735
I miss something like this at our university, really.
736
We're still the old way.
737
But this is the future.
738
Again, you might say, you know, how is it about production?
739
The people who work in retail, they don't have work space like this.
740
Yeah, that's right.
741
That's right.
742
But in fields where the people primarily think and communicate you will find spaces like this.
743
More and more.
744
And the proportion of jobs where you primarily think and communicate is steadily growing.
745
I already mentioned this.
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Speaking Goals for This Clip
This video is perfect for practicing shadowing technique—a key skill for fluency. You’ll learn to follow natural speech rhythm, pause where native speakers do, and mimic conversational tone. The goal? To sound more confident when discussing work, HR, and daily routines, whether in a job interview or casual chat. By shadowing the dialogue, you’ll also get comfortable with longer sentences, which is a big milestone for moving beyond basic phrases.
Phrase Bank
- "What characterizes modern work?" – Great for starting discussions or essays.
- "the balance between work and private life" – A common topic in professional settings.
- "employee survey" – Essential vocabulary for HR or workplace conversations.
- "employer attractiveness" – Useful when talking about job choices or company reputation.
- "time recording" – Perfect for describing workplace routines or tools.
Fix Your Weak Spots
This clip helps with improving English pronunciation of tricky terms like "Arbeitszeit" (though we’ll focus on its English equivalent, "working hours") and "Arbeitgeberattraktivität" ("employer attractiveness"). The speaker’s clear, conversational pace makes it ideal for shadow speech—repeat each sentence right after them to match their stress and intonation. Notice how they pause before explaining key concepts (e.g., "We used to differentiate between these two different worlds, right?")—this rhythm is crucial for sounding natural. Use a shadowing site to practice alongside the video, pausing and replaying sections until you can keep up smoothly. Over time, you’ll find your own speech flows more easily, even when discussing complex topics like the future of work.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if a company would totally · If you drop it, it will bounce |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are paid · were created · were drunk |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | those which are · something which is · work, which is |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have talked · haven't mentioned · have heard |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.