Hybrid collaboration has become a part of everyday life for many companies. For this particular reason, they should encourage a digital mission statement, a healthy approach to technology, and greater digital competence.
After New Work, the term of the hour is New Digital Work. This refers to a targeted combination of digital, agile, self-determined and flexible work. A recent study by the Fraunhofer Institute examined what the change to New Digital Work means for employees and companies. One key finding was that it is important for both employees and executives to acknowledge the changes, accept the shift to New Digital Work, and be willing and motivated to drive on and help to shape the process. New Digital Work thus requires a change in corporate culture.
Providing orientation in the New Normal
The patent and law firm Maiwald shows how a company can support and accompany this change in a targeted manner. During the pandemic, it became clear to Maiwald that the approximately 240 employees would not return to the offices in Munich and Düsseldorf for their full working hours. Although the changeover to digital working went well and quickly at the time, many questions surrounding teamwork and digital skills were not finally resolved.
“It was clear to us that we would need binding answers to the questions surrounding digital work in the long term,” explains Dr Martin Huenges, Partner at Maiwald, adding, “The heart of our firm is our employees. It is our responsibility to ensure that they can develop their personal potential, also with a view to the challenges of digitalization, and that we create the right offers for communication in the teams, the strengthening of digital skills, and technical equipment for this purpose.”
This responsibility led to the launch of the “Digital Mission Statement” project together with the occupational psychologists of the ias Group, Hye-Jung Chung and Dr Stephanie Tremmel. “The media competence of the employees should be specifically expanded and supported so that everyone has the appropriate tools to deal with the new challenges,” explains Hye-Jung Chung.
Interaction between company, teams and employees
From the very beginning, the project involved representatives from all occupational groups so that the employees could stand behind the digital mission statement and see themselves reflected in it. Lars Weißbach, who is leading the “Digital Mission Statement” project at Maiwald, explains: “We definitely wanted to avoid the management dictating or imposing anything. All Maiwald employees should be able to actively participate in the digital mission statement right from the beginning.”
For this purpose, the project was set up on three levels:
At the corporate level there was the digital mission statement, which was intended to create a framework for a healthy and competent work with digital media throughout the company. It was created in a participatory manner, i.e., in workshops with a mixed group and in feedback rounds with all employees.
At the team level, team charters with specific team rules were drawn up on the basis of the mission statement. This created a mutual commitment to interaction and cooperation along the question of “What is important to us?”
These two levels were complemented by blended learning, in which each employee was able to strengthen his or her own media skills in a self-learning phase in web-based training sessions and to deepen knowledge in a joint online exchange.
“Many companies ask themselves ‘Do we really need this?” when it comes to digital skills and a digital value system,” says Dr Stephanie Tremmel, adding, “We know from experience that the differences in the understanding of digital work usually only come to light when things become very concrete.” That’s why Maiwald has set up a project management team. Lars Weißbach reports, “At the beginning, the project was looked at critically because it was nothing directly tangible. It was clear to me that we had to motivate as many colleagues as possible to participate so that in the end we wouldn’t just have a piece of paper in our hands, but a sustainable change.” According to the project manager, the workshops and exchange formats were particularly helpful in this regard because they made the topic tangible and experienceable. Feedback formats such as online surveys on the draft digital mission statement were also very well received.
Communication as key
Part of the project’s success so far is due to good and consistent communication. “I try to catch up with colleagues personally and always make new offers to keep things going. Transparency and continuity are important in this project”, says Weißbach. There is a lot of potential in it, but it also requires patience because the changes don’t just happen. In the end, it depends on each and every one of us, whether the digital mission statement is implemented and practiced. The management level in particular is decisive in this process. How they act has a high impact: “If just one partner does not participate, the entire mission statement quickly becomes fragile. That’s why I always try to stay on top of things and also deal intensively with critical voices. That’s often not that easy and requires a lot of energy”, says Weißbach.
Digital mission statement reminds us of the goals
The “Digital Mission Statement” project at Maiwald will end in summer 2023 – but Weißbach suspects that it will never fully be completed. After all, the joint work on the digital mission statement, on team charters and in blended learning has brought new exchanges and new formats to life. The firm has already been able to anchor these firmly in everyday life. The change in corporate culture is evident in small ways: in cross-hierarchical meetings, feedback rounds, and the “aha effects” of blended learning. “Many of the topics we agreed to as part of the mission statement sound banal,” says Lars Weißbach. “But if you look closely, we don’t always implement them consistently in everyday life. The mission statement and team charters are meant to remind us regularly how we want to work together.”
This text is taken from an article by the ias Group that appeared in the „Frankfurter Allgemeine Personaljournal“. The full text version of the contribution can be found here (Text in German).
