Talent-driven transformation of industrial giant Bosch

The interview of "CEConline" with Rosa Lee (Li Xiaohong), Executive Vice President of Bosch China, started from Bosch's transformation from an industrial manufacturing company to the Internet of Things.

As the HR director of Bosch Greater China and Southeast Asia, Rosa first introduced that it may be the biggest strategic transformation in Bosch's 133-year development history. She emphasized that it is closely related to the company's strategic transformation. The associated Bosch talent development and management play an active role, because only the drive of talent can truly achieve Bosch's "maximum strategic transformation".

Before Bosch proposed the transformation to the innovative Internet of Things, it was already the world's largest supplier of auto parts. Almost every car in the world has parts provided by Bosch, and the automotive business is also a large part of its business. than one of the largest main business. Overall, Bosch's main business covers four major areas: automotive and intelligent transportation technology, industrial technology, consumer goods, and energy and building technology.

After starting the transformation of the Internet of Things, Bosch will focus on building software and service capabilities on the basis of the original hardware product advantages that tend to be extreme, and will become an Internet of Things technology giant that combines software, hardware and services. set off.

After several years of full-scale transformation, Bosch has vigorously laid out "electricity, intelligence, and networking" in future transportation based on the concept of the Internet of Things, and has achieved preliminary results. The data released by Bosch shows that, In 2018, Bosch achieved global sales of 78.5 billion euros (about 604.5 billion yuan), of which the sales of the automotive and intelligent transportation technology business segment were 47.6 billion euros (about 366.5 billion yuan). In addition, in 2018, Bosch sold a total of 52 million IoT products, a year-on-year increase of 37%.

Bosch's IoT transformation is not easy. Before the transformation, Bosch had more than 400,000 employees worldwide, more than 400 subsidiaries and regional companies in nearly 60 countries, and more than 100 R&D bases around the world. The main composition of employees is industrial talents, the proportion of IT professionals is very low, and even fewer employees with IoT background. The market needs to be more agile to respond to the needs of users, forcing borderless cooperation inside and outside the organization; the original organizational structure does not match the IoT enterprise, and the original performance evaluation system cannot accurately reflect the capabilities and work performance of technical professionals , the construction and operation of the project team cannot flexibly and quickly integrate resources and produce efficient output. These situations show the urgency and inevitability of the need for "change" within Bosch.

It is the advanced talent development strategy that drives and supports the "elephant turn" of this giant ship-level company. Rosa told CEConline that for the smooth advancement and final implementation of the new strategic blueprint, Bosch started the transformation of talent and organizational model even before the launch of the new business strategy, and launched a new intelligent talent development and management innovation.

Talent-driven enterprise strategic transformation is also a real problem faced by all enterprises. From the perspective of HR, Bosch starts from three aspects: transformational leadership, transformational talent management mechanism and transformation of human resources department. Rosa said that the biggest feature of Bosch's HR transformation that closely follows business development is that everything starts from people, users (employees) are the first, iterates management concepts and tools rapidly, transforms traditional departments, builds agile teams, reshapes company culture, and in short, adapts to the market and changes in the company's business.

Creating "new" talents

Different from Internet companies, Bosch was a relatively traditional company in the past, focusing on "order, regulation and standardization".

In the process of transforming IoT enterprises, all the changes revolve around keywords such as "flexibility, interconnection, and user value", and people are the core of them. The ultimate goal is to build good talents. This core resource accelerates the company's transformation.

Rosa told "CEConline": "The transformation of the enterprise's own business and the transformation of the enterprise's talent development strategy are the relationship between cause and effect, and the latter is a very important cause for the success of the former. If the development strategy cannot keep up, it will be difficult to transform the business, because the implementation of the strategy is ultimately realized by people.” Therefore, Bosch regards the “people-centered” policy as the key to HR transformation, and all services are based on the development of talents, which is also digital , The core of talent management in the era of intelligence.

In the early stage of the transformation, Bosch spent huge sums of money decisively to acquire an AI start-up company, quickly absorbed the scarce AI talents, and also demonstrated to the market Bosch's determination to transform into an IoT enterprise.

In terms of talent recruitment, Bosch's previous corporate image and methods are more suitable for attracting traditional manufacturing talents. Rosa gave an analogy to "CEConline", "It's like fishing, throwing the bait on the water. However, in this way, Bosch, which is transforming the Internet of Things, cannot attract professionals in cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data and the Internet of Things.

Bosch has adjusted its recruitment method, which is different from the traditional method of "posting recruitment information - waiting for resumes to submit". Bosch takes a proactive approach to the urgently needed IoT talents. The "Hackathon" event in China is in line with the interests of professional talents, and suitable talents are found and recruited; the "Daniu Recruitment Fair" is held, and the sharing of the technical field is arranged to attract outstanding talents in the industry to attend and communicate through on-site communication. Find the right talents and complete the recruitment goals. The purpose of these arrangements is to be able to step into the world of IoT candidates and stay in touch with them for a longer period of time.

Bosch changed the leadership policy that was only applicable to managers to activate everyone, and launched the principle of "We Lead Bosch", advocating that all Bosch people are leaders. Moreover, design thinking/user experience has been fully applied to internal human resource management. HR looks at employees from the perspective of users. All processes and management methods are also designed based on employees, and based on this, the development of user experience first Talent management model. On this basis, Bosch has explored a new approach that is different from the past in terms of talent management transformation.

“Recruitment ideas should be constantly explored and changed following the direction of business transformation. HR should quickly keep up with changes in the market and customers, so as to be more attractive to new talents.” Rosa said. In order to attract IoT talents who are in line with the development of the times and in line with the company's strategic transformation, Bosch has readjusted the company's external brand and employer image, and conveyed that Bosch will become an IoT company in the future through a series of brand promotions; For example, as early as 2014, Bosch has held an IoT conference in Berlin every year, bringing together leading manufacturers in Bosch related fields and top players in the industry chain to discuss cutting-edge technologies and business models in the industry, and deepen the outside world's understanding of the "Internet of Things". - Bosch" perception.

For existing internal IoT talents, Bosch will also launch personalized talent development projects from time to time. The HR team insists on deeply understanding the interests and needs of technical talents. For example, in the interview, it was found that these professional and technical personnel have pure technical communication needs. In response to this result, Bosch will launch targeted interactions such as "Technical Knowledge Sharing Session", "Expert Competition", "Short-term Temporary Team Project" and "Club Training".

In addition to vigorously seeking IoT talents, Bosch also attaches great importance to the iterative upgrading of internal "traditional" talents, and attaches great importance to the combination of talent transformation and business. For example, this year, the Bosch China Training Center has strengthened its role as a Learning consultant It is closer to the business, responds to the pain points of talent development brought about by the transformation of the business department, and quickly provides tailor-made solutions.

“The transformation of the enterprise’s own business and the transformation of the enterprise’s talent development strategy complement each other. The business transformation puts forward new requirements for the talent development strategy, and in the future, the talent development strategy will even go before the business transformation.” Rosa It is said that in terms of people analytics, Bosch has gradually explored the predictive analysis of skills through internal and external big data, prepared in advance, and carried out key skills planning from all aspects of selection, breeding, and retention to support the company's business transformation.

Activating individuals and organizations

In order to integrate digital technology into the business model, Bosch established a CDO (Chief Digital Officer) at the group level and stipulated Every business unit has to set up a CDO, which started Bosch's "digital transformation".

The transformation of human resource management started before the business transformation was not smooth sailing. "There was a lot of 'noise' in the early days, and there were various situations such as employees not understanding, employee turnover, and project execution. " Rosa said, "To break the worries of employees in the transformation, all the interests of employees need to be resolved, so that employees feel that it is promising to follow the company's new direction."

In order to match the strategy To meet the needs of transformation, the Bosch HR team gradually explored new organizational methods, re-invigorated the company organization, stimulated organizational vitality, and created a new internal talent ecological environment suitable for the transformation of the Internet of Things. "Be able to throw different balls, like a magician who throws balls, who can play both traditional balls and trendy balls, and can play at the same time," Rosa said.

Bosch has set up a special "HR Lab" for this purpose, which is designed to design different human resource solutions required in the transformation, and has explored many innovative products, such as subverting the annual performance evaluation In this way, employees under the new organizational form can independently choose time nodes to contribute to discussions and feedback, and can independently choose partners for discussions, etc.

Building a learning organization that is closely aligned with the business is the key to Bosch's IoT strategic transformation, Rosa told "CEConline" that the project design of the learning organization brings together business experts, training experts and external consulting firms. Based on the wisdom of the readers, digital transformation projects are designed through target user analysis, business analysis, and strategic analysis, which are divided into three parts: transformation projects, digital learning and agile learning tool modules.

Specifically, by analyzing the needs of different groups of people and the department's requirements for digital talents, we design transformation projects with different focuses. Each project will closely integrate digital learning and agile learning tools; digital learning and agile learning Learning tools are learning methods and tools used to assist transformation projects, and can also be used as independent methods and tools to support the transformation needs of business units.

This is also a change in the overall company culture. Rosa said that one of the keys to digital transformation is full-scale cross-departmental, cross-regional and cross-cultural collaboration, and creating an open, collaborative and inspiring work scene is a manifestation of digital culture.

Therefore, Bosch launched the IWC (Inspiring Working Conditions) practice around the world, breaking the previous "closed" office pattern, creating an open, shared, casual and comfortable office environment, canceling fixed workstations, even for big bosses. There is also no separate office. A kitchen is set up in the office area to provide free coffee and fruit baskets. Colleagues can also share all kinds of food made by themselves in the kitchen area... Strengthen everyone's connection from work to life.

Digital and intelligent management system

Bosch began to build its own digital and intelligent management platform very early to achieve the "self-driven and self-management" required by agile organizations The ability to activate employees' self-transformation awareness.

As early as the first half of 2017, Bosch headquarters established a workforce analytics team and identified three priority areas of practice: real-time data platform; skills management; continuous listening. At the same time, Bosch keeps trying new artificial intelligence technologies, such as chatbots, intelligent learning solutions, candidate portraits, resume screening, preliminary contact of candidates, primary interviews, and RPA technology, etc., which are fully applied in talent attraction, recruitment, and talent incentives. , learning and development, organizational development, human/data analysis, performance management, etc.

Compared with the German headquarters, Bosch China's digitalization is going faster. The HR team of "Digital China" clearly recognizes that mobile means more to employees than Germany. Rosa told CEConline: "The Chinese team is leading Bosch's global practice in mobile learning. This is just the beginning. All aspects of the talent management system should be mobile-based. As Peter Drucker said, the essence of management is It stimulates people's goodwill and potential, and the mobile-based talent management system allows managers to focus on the company's most important asset: talent anytime, anywhere."

Take Bosch's mobile learning attempt "myTransform" as For example, in fact, since 2016, Bosch has started to try mobile learning. The main purpose is to stimulate employees' interest in learning, cultivate their awareness of self-learning, and create the concept of "my transformation, I am the master". In the process of digital transformation, "myTransform" has a new mission: to achieve organizational development through individual learning. The iterative learning platform not only integrates with the organizational needs of digital transformation, but also meets the individual needs of employees.

During the development process, Bosch has conducted in-depth docking with users at all levels, using the theories and methods of design thinking, from user analysis, opportunity identification to prototyping, to launch intelligent learning solutions. "myTransform" not only allows employees to study in fragments anytime, anywhere, but also can meet the personalized learning needs of employees and realize customized learning content recommendation for thousands of people; at the same time, the platform can also be combined with other social media, Address barriers to use for employees around the world. "myTransform" has a pre-guidance function, which can be based on personal factors such as different functions, working years, and competencies of employees, and is strongly correlated with Bosch's thirteen digital transformation competencies, so that an exclusive learning engine can be customized step by step.

Rosa said that in the future, it should be possible to obtain employees' career development plans more accurately, so as to better promote employees' self-learning and development. The platform will also record students' learning data, such as learning hotspot time, frequency, duration, content preferences, and user result data (such as learning efficiency, test scores, and practice scores), and interpret employees' learning behavior through analysis of various dimensions. Do further growth analysis; at the same time, it can also use data analysis to optimize knowledge content, so as to achieve personalized content recommendation.

“In order to better assist the transformation of employees, the users of this platform are not limited to white-collar workers, but also include blue-collar workers, giving them the opportunity to learn new knowledge and skills to better meet the The era of Industry 4.0,” Rosa said.

As a giant ship-level company with more than 400,000 employees, Bosch keeps abreast of the changing environment and responds quickly in terms of talent management, breaking all kinds of constraints and exploring new ways in the transformation. Rosa said that the key to the transformation is to empower employees, not only to introduce outstanding compound talents from outside, but also to help the transformation of existing internal talents; to create an agile organization, to achieve rapid decision-making, shorten processes, reduce communication costs, and quickly Respond to market changes.

Figure / Bosch