HR Talk with Lena Lindemann and Sylvie Nicol

Thank you Lena. Thank you very much for having me. My pleasure to be there with you today. I'm actually as you said a member of the management board of Henkel. I'm responsible for human resources as well for infrastructure services and for corporate sustainability and I have the pleasure to be in that role for a bit more than four years but much longer time with Henkel, close to 28 years actually.

Exactly. Actually, to complement or to give you the perspective from a different angle, our workforce goes from 18 years old to 82 years old because we're a global company and in some countries you can work beyond 65 or 67 years old. So we have actually the same challenges but certainly because of our footprint some countries might be slightly different than what we experience in Europe.

Oh wow. There are multiple challenges. First of all, I think having multiple generations under one roof creates the obligation for HR and for leaders to be very mindful of the differences in expectations, expectations in life and expectations at work. And that creates for us also fantastic opportunities, I would say, to benefit from the huge diversity of these generations which we are trying daily to do, experiencing for example tandems or mentoring or giving a voice to new generations. We are trying to make sure that senior generations also feel represented and have a voice in the company. Yeah, for me another challenge is the risk of losing knowledge. I think with such a great amount of people entering into retirement within the next years, there is a risk of losing institutional knowledge here. So I think we also have the challenge of providing formats to keep the knowledge, be it by passing it on to the next generation but also by using new technologies. And I think we'll come to this later. I see a big support also in generative AI for this knowledge transfer.

Yeah, that's true. And one important factor for us is strategic workforce planning here to have a closer look at what exactly are the skills and the amount of people and skills that we need in the upcoming years to be able to better plan also how we secure the knowledge passing to the next generation or through some knowledge sharing platform. So I think that's a big or will be also a big topic here. Do you see openness for the employees who have this knowledge to transfer it to the new generation?

Yes, we feel the same and we are doing multiple experiences, you could also call them pilots. Maybe to name one, we have started what we call a New Generation Leadership Circle. This is a group of employees from new generations who are mirroring our executive committees and they have the difficult task to challenge us and especially to make us aware of our blind spots because sometimes the leadership groups are more or less of the same generation, which is not necessarily Gen Z, and we have blind spots definitely. So they help us in surfacing the blind spots. It's difficult because for sure we all come from different perspectives but once you found a way you get really interesting insights. I don't know if you have maybe similar formats.

I think the opportunities also lie in the fact that sometimes we look at the differences between the generations but we forget to look at the commonalities. Exactly. And when you start looking at what actually some generations have in common, you find more than what you thought. Yeah. And maybe the example I can quote is topics related to flexible working conditions or topics related to mental health. They were brought by Gen Z but when we start talking and engaging with the workforce we see that they are important across generations. So that's also nice to look at what generations have in common and not only what makes them different.

Yeah. I was certainly speaking here also a bit from personal experience. Indeed having experience moments in my life for example where I was not mobile because my three kids were extremely young and I thought it was not really the right moment where the company Henkel was very respectful of that. And at the moment when I was in a different phase of my life, other opportunities were coming that I could catch. And I believe if you have this ability to listen to these phases of life and to adapt as much as you can, as much as it is a win-win because sometimes it cannot work, sometimes you can make it work, then you get the best for the employee and for the employer.

Yeah. Maybe building on what you said. I was just reflecting because I was talking about my own experience when having kids. I had kids at an early stage of my life, 27, but I also see colleagues having kids today at 45 or 46 years old. So it's certainly the same phase of life, but not the same age. So I also find that interesting for us as a child to reflect on that. But the moment and what happens in your life at this moment is certainly the same sort of experience while 20 years of age difference. Yeah. And also different opportunities with regard to how job changes due to technological changes, the openness also to learn new jobs and to develop is also different from former times. So my experience is that people are much more open also to learn and to build up their skills and that's also not limited to a certain period in a career. I think there was a time where there was a certain fear of what you didn't know. And today we are certainly getting a bit more casual with not knowing because anywhere especially with digital it's going so fast. You can never know it all. You need to accept that you have knowledge gaps and we become certainly a bit more open on accepting that we need to get back to trainings, we need to learn new things, which certainly for leaders at times has been difficult to acknowledge that they didn't know something. Today the world is different. All of us we always have something where we need to learn. Exactly.

Well, it's a very challenging question which is everywhere. And I also try to put my arms around it and the more I think about it, the more I think firstly it's not the El Dorado. It's not like it's going to solve everything and all challenges we have, but it's certainly a fantastic opportunity as long as we go step by step, we don't go too fast in thinking it's going to solve everything and we need to adopt extremely fast on everything. On the other hand, I'm really convinced that there's no way to escape. Some people still think maybe no, there is no way to escape. It's like I always compare that to when we had our first computers because I've been living that period. First computer, you need to use it every day. There was no way out. Now AI is there. It will be there even more. We need to adopt it. I think I've been reading somewhere that the time we will invest into AI will be 10% in designing, 20% in technologies, and 70% in supporting people and process change. And I tend to believe that's where the biggest change will come. So no job certainly in the future will go without a touch of AI, but it's not that it will completely change everything we do today, at least for HR.

Yeah, that's interesting. And I would also be interested in how you work with AI already at Henkel. How do you get familiar with that? So we have been starting what we call a playground for a certain number of employees who are sort of piloting certain tools which are really leveraging AI like Copilot and organizing meetings and writing notes, summary, minutes, etc., to get acquainted to it. On the other hand, in HR like for the business actually it's the same approach. We have defined business cases where we believe there is really an opportunity to accelerate, to create impact as fast as possible, and we work very closely with our digital organization and they drive us through these business cases. So for HR we have for sure identified opportunities in recruitment but also in learning big time to be faster in creating the learnings that we need, to bring the things together, to make them accessible for employees. I think recruitment, learning are the two biggest fast impact topics that we can have, but we for sure see also a lot of opportunity in skills management, open job marketplace which will certainly come as well. What about you?

Exactly. I believe so. That's something to keep in mind, that will be important to guide the workforce.

Yes, it is. But we are also still trying to explore what are the skills, the future skills that we need on a business side. I mean we probably all know that there will be certain non-business, non-technical skills. One I've just mentioned: critical thinking, analytical thinking, also empathy. But with regard to foresee into the next years and see how business skills change, my experience is that we sometimes still struggle with that. And here also strategic workforce planning helps. I think we have the same concerns even if we are in different industries. Actually skills is also a topic for us. So we are building up our skills database first to know where we are, what skills do we have in the company, with the purpose to create a talent marketplace going forward. And in parallel, exactly as you say, trying to project ourselves into the future: what are the skills that will be needed and where will be the scarcity, and how do we deal with it and where do we build the future skills? And more and more we also go where the skills are. So we've been opening for example a digital hub in India. Fantastic skills place for digital skills. We have opened our hair experience center in Asia because for us that was really a key place where we felt there are interesting skills for this business. Or developed a new engineer hub in Spain in Montres where we have a big factory because that's where we felt there are some skills that we really need. So more and more we go where the skills are but we need to make sure that they travel afterwards and that we can also sometimes bring them where we need them in the future. So that would be one of the big stakes of the future for us.

There's also certainly a political component to it because as you said demography, but also what in some countries governments or education system have been pushing. What we experience in China for example is that we will certainly be confronted with scarcity of production worker, production workforce, because there was a clear push to bring everybody to university. And then working in factories in the future for this group of people who have been developed and educated in university is not necessarily fitting. So that is something for us definitely to address going forward because we will continue to manufacture, that's in the essence of what we do. So it's sometimes about demography, about education system. So from one country to another very different situation when it comes to skills management obviously.

Yeah, it's a broad question. So I would certainly say that change is here to stay. We are surrounded by high speed of change between technologies, workforce expectations, sometimes also in political instability, and that certainly will be with us for the years to come. Therefore, I think our responsibility as HR is to make sure that the culture of the company is permanently adapting to this need for change, and that we develop thoughtful leaders and we manage to keep a very engaged workforce.

Yeah, you see me smiling because busy agenda is daily life. So it's a big and permanent fight to make sure that you create enough space in the agenda to be able to think, to reflect, to take care of your team and not spending your entire time in meetings. And actually that's one of the big things I'm doing with my close team weekly to really clean the agenda and prepare and make sure that I'm participating in the right things. And what I can delegate, I delegate. But that's not easy, especially for my generation who has been used to be in each and everything. It's a learning journey to let go.

Thank you for having me. That was a pleasure.