SIEMENS

An Oscar, Golden Globes, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — Renée Zellweger has been showered with the highest honors of the media world. What more could an actress achieve? In 2009, though, she needed a one-year timeout due to total exhaustion. Hers isn’t a rare or isolated case in the celebrity world. But it isn’t just stars who sometimes lose interest in their work, at least for a time, and have to take a break from the rat race. According to the Hamburg-based Fürstenberg Institute, which provides corporate health management services, 84 percent of workers in Germany felt that workplace conditions were putting them under strain in 2011. Think tank HamburgischesWeltWirtschaftsInstitut estimates that the resulting loss in output equals €364 billion — almost one sixth of Germany’s gross domestic product.

“Burnout is a chronic fatigue syndrome, often associated with depression,” says Dr. Ulrich Birner, who is responsible for matters related to psychological health at Siemens. It is caused by being overburdened for an extended period and a lack of a healthy balance, whereby response to strain varies from person to person. “Everyone needs exertion to stay healthy. Just as I need an incentive when practicing some type of athletic activity. The modification and dosage are all that matters,” explains Birner.

Companies around the world are testing various approaches to help prevent burnout. For example, pharmaceuticals manufacturer Merck is hiding the “Reply to All” button in e-mails so that employees will stop clicking it reflexively and thus needlessly overloading other employees’ inboxes. Intel has introduced “Zero E-Mail Friday,” and consumer goods firm Henkel sometimes even sends managers to a monastery to help them manage stress.

An Issue for the CEO. “Physical exercise, seminars, and counseling are part of our corporate health management repertoire at Siemens too,” says Birner. But stand-alone offerings aren’t enough — to achieve a healthy corporate culture they must be connected and complemented in sensible ways. This means the approach must be deeply rooted. “Siemens is one of many companies that have formulated sustainability goals in recent years in order to live up to their social responsibility while also staying successful in business,” says Dr. Ralf Franke, who is responsible for environmental protection, health management, and work safety at Siemens. “In addition to environmental issues, the social aspect is now becoming increasingly important.” In 2009 Siemens therefore brought these issues together in an Environmental Protection, Health Management and Safety unit, which has the authority to establish company-wide guidelines. The unit also defines binding standards, responsibilities, and processes.

“We’re now introducing a health management system that will enable the company to systematically promote its employees’ health at workplaces around the world, above and beyond what’s required by law,” says Franke, who adds that this is new in terms of international standards. “This is an issue for the attention of the CEO, not just the chief medical officer. After all, any department is only as capable as its employees. So creating conditions that promote good health is a management responsibility.” Department heads are supported by a professional, company-wide health management organization and by standards that apply to all business units and organizations.

But first, managers themselves have to be made more aware of the issue. With this in mind, the introduction of systematic health management is being supported by a module on “Health-Conscious Management” that has been added to all manager training sessions and special management health programs. “Thanks to this approach managers can learn how to adapt to everyday processes, often with only modest effort, so that their teams can work in an atmosphere that is more conducive to good health,” says Franke. To put it plainly, he adds, “When either workplaces or large projects are planned, consideration should be given not just to technical, business-related, environmental, and safety issues, but also to subjects such as a healthy workplace, psychological health, encouragement of physical activity, healthy diet, and medical care.” Right from the start, for example, there should be efforts to ensure that workstations are properly designed, that teamwork is characterized by mutual support, and that managers are adequately trained to recognize excessive strain and respond to employees appropriately.

Life after Siemens. “It’s becoming harder and harder to keep employees’ work lives and private lives separate,” says Maximilian d’Huc, a strategist at Siemens Corporate Human Resources. “The work world is becoming more flexible, and it requires new models of communication and work.” For example, some employees from the younger “Generation Y” — which made up 68 percent of new Siemens hires worldwide in 2011 (see graphic at left)?— want to pick their children up from the day-care center at lunchtime and continue working from home. “Why not?” asks d’Huc. After all, you don’t rate a player by the total distance he runs on the soccer field but rather by the number of goals he scores during the game. “But there has to be the right balance, of course. The work done by many of our staff members requires a communicative environment.”

This is where the new open-plan “Siemens Office” comes into play. In the future, open-plan offices should serve to encourage communication all over the world. Employees, depending on their needs, will select the right workplace for themselves in quiet areas or discussion zones. “The mobile office promotes work-life integration through the additional freedom it provides. Sabbaticals and part-time work agreements also help employees to reconcile family and job,” says d’Huc. “In this context, we also want to offer about 2,000 day-care spots in Germany by 2015.”. The prerequisite for so much freedom and flexibility is a management culture that works on the basis of objectives and relies on trust, and less on presence in the office.

But the aim is to make everyone comfortable — not just Generation Y. “There’s a lot to learn from experienced co-workers; we don’t want to lose them,” d’Huc says. In 2009, with this in mind, the Energy sector formed a “Future Retirees Resource Group” in Orlando, Florida. There are currently 200 members. The objective is to prepare older employees for their retirement and establish links with them for the period after Siemens. “Then they become mentors and give seminars,” says d’Huc. The company’s “Generations Employee Network (GENe)” takes a similar approach. “With support from our Diversity department, employees are building an inter-generational network for co-workers from the Erlangen, Nuremberg, and Forchheim area in Germany,” says d’Huc. In the future, members of different generations will network there, learn from one another, and work together.

Demographic change has additional consequences, however: “Skilled workers are becoming harder to find, so there’s a growing need to adapt the work environment to employees’ changing needs,” says d’Huc. “Classic job situations — 20 years, fixed working times, no more than one boss — are increasingly giving way to a flexible work environment.”

The same applies to booming countries like Brazil, Russia, India, and China. “In these countries, Siemens should have up to 60 percent more local talent in research in the future. But international companies are no longer automatically the first choice in these countries; domestic firms are becoming more and more attractive employers,” says d’Huc. There’s often high turnover in these countries, too, which leads to an annual hiring rate of 20 to 40 percent. But the struggle to win over the best and the brightest is underway. In 2011 Siemens launched an ambassador program covering six countries in the ASEAN-Pacific area. The program calls for commercial directors and sales managers to become ambassadors of the company and take part in an active exchange with students at partner universities.

Investing in People. With roughly 10,000 apprentices and students combining academic instruction with on-the-job training, Siemens is one of the biggest providers of vocational instruction in Germany. Initiatives such as the Siemens Graduate Program, with 1,900 participants worldwide, are now also taking effect in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, China, and India. “This program is very attractive for university graduates because of its variety of duties and subjects,” says d’Huc. The option of combining study with training at Siemens is also quite popular internationally, whether the academic program is in a technical or commercial field or in computer science. For a three-year period, the student attends lectures and takes part in training and practical segments at Siemens that prepare trainees for specific jobs at the company. In the past, combining study and training at Siemens was an option reserved only for young graduates from Germany, but in late 2011 the company officially opened a gas turbine factory in Charlotte, North Carolina (U.S.) and simultaneously set up a partnership there with Central Piedmont Community College. In the future, skilled production workers will be trained here — with courses in laser and robot technologies, for example — with Siemens covering the tuition.

The Siemens initiative impressed U.S. President Barack Obama so much that in his State of the Union address in late January 2012 he cited this work-study combination as a model for creating new jobs. “I want every American looking for work to have the same opportunity as Jackie did,” said Obama, referring to Jackie Bray, a single mother. After being laid off from her job as a mechanic, she found a new position in the Siemens gas turbine plant — and the company invested in her by paying for her advanced training at Central Piedmont Community College.