There have never been as many female executives in Switzerland as there are today: According to the 16th schillingreport, the proportion of women on executive boards is rising for the first time by 3 percentage points (+ 30 %) from 10 % to a new high of 13 %. The number of female CEOs increases at the same time from 3 to 5 - and will increase to 8 in the current year. The public sector already employs 21 % women in top management.

Gender diversity has moved up the consciousness

The advance of female executives is underscored by the fact that the largest employers recently filled one in four vacant executive positions (26 %) with a woman, up from 21 % a year earlier, the report notes. For example, the public sector appointed a woman to 29 % of top executive vacancies. On the boards of the 100 largest employers, the proportion of women increased from 23% to 24%, according to the research. "After a long phase of sensitization regarding gender diversity, most companies have arrived at the awareness phase," notes the schillingreport 2021. They have now recognized how central their own
pipeline of female talent for business success. The number of companies that do not have a woman on their management board recently fell again significantly to 42 % (previous year 47 %). It is likely to be quite a few years before the acceptance phase - when appointments of women to management boards are as commonplace as those of men - is reached. "It's not for nothing that I always talk about a generational project," says editor Guido Schilling.

Expertise increases

This year's edition of the schillingreport evaluates the composition of the boards of directors by expertise for the first time. Here shows
The study shows that the members with an operational general management background clearly predominate with 61 %, while 39 % of the members ensure corporate governance with their expertise. 54 % of female board members have governance expertise, while two-thirds (66 %) of their male colleagues have a general management background.

More female managers in key functions

Women are increasingly taking on key functions: 52 % (previous year 39 %) of the new female members of the Executive Board assumed a role relevant to sales or earnings. Only 48 % (previous year 61 %) assumed a service role such as Human Resources or Legal. Among existing female Executive Board members, nearly two-thirds (65 %) are responsible for service functions. "The
companies' commitment to attracting women to sales- and market-related business management roles is also strongly felt in my day-to-day business," says Schilling. "That's why I always advise young women and men to develop in the company's core business and gain experience abroad if they want a career in top management." In addition, diversity generally makes companies more resilient, as another study has recently demonstrated.

Source: Guido Schilling AG

Every year, the international market research company Statista, together with the Handelszeitung and Le Temps, determines the best employers in Switzerland. Thousands of employees were surveyed in the large-scale study between May and June 2020. Together with the votes on the two media portals, over 200,000 assessments were received. The beverage manufacturer Rivella made it to first place on the list of the 250 best employers in Switzerland, relegating elevator manufacturer Schindler and the Swiss Paraplegic Group to the places of honor.

Open communication in challenging times

The joy in Rothrist, the headquarters of the Swiss family-owned company, is enormous. "The fact that our employees and employees from other companies in the consumer goods sector give us such high marks shows us that we have done a lot right in recent years and also during Corona," Markus Krienbühl, HR Manager at Rivella, is convinced. Due to the lockdown and the associated closure of the catering facilities and cancellation of countless events, Rivella already had to announce short-time work for a few weeks in the spring. Among other things, Krienbühl is convinced that the employees greatly appreciated the open, transparent, and regular communication.

Strengthening the employer brand internally and externally

In the survey, Rivella scored above average in the areas of "pay," "cooperation," and "conditions and equipment," according to the report. But Markus Krienbühl is convinced that no one makes the journey to Rothrist for the pay alone: "We pay salaries that are customary in the industry. It is rather the overall package that makes the difference," says the head of HR. In recent years, Rivella has made many efforts to position itself even better as an employer and to strengthen its employer brand both internally and externally. This has helped to dynamize the company as an employer, strengthen the emotional bond between employees and support cultural change. The management and corporate culture had been further developed in a targeted manner on the basis of trust, appreciation and respect. "All this with the aim of being able to offer attractive and modern working conditions as an employer," Markus Krienbühl summarizes.

Remain Switzerland's best employer

The big challenge now will be to remain an attractive employer for future generations of employees. To ensure that this is the case, Rivella AG says it is investing a lot in its employees, in new forms of work and in a living WE culture.

Source: Rivella AG

How is the Corona pandemic changing our corporate and working world? In a "backward forecast", we look for initial answers. Here is Part 5 on the topic: Credible family businesses are sustainably crisis-resistant.

Through the crisis with drive and spirit

We were thrilled to see how agile and courageous the rather down-to-earth family-owned company Trigema from Burladingen in Germany, led by patriarch Wolfgang Grupp, switched its textile production from T-shirts to face masks in a very short time in March 2020. How Jägermeister donated alcohol for the production of disinfectant. Hansgrohe sent entire shower trucks to help the homeless in urban centers. And how D'Addario, a family-owned New York company, turned the clear film of its EVANS drumheads into medical face masks for drummers - and, in just a few days, used its original strengths to build an entirely new medical-necessities business alongside its music-accessories business.

I wonder how much profit the Grupp family, as the owner of Trigema, could make in the meantime from the new face mask business. I think it will be considerable - especially because the business with masks is still growing strongly. Today, in the summer of 2022, face masks are hip fashion accessories and it's hard to imagine everyday street life without them. We have all become accustomed to them. They come in a wide variety of colors, patterns and shapes. Many - especially young people - use them to express their personality.

The good name in mind

Under the pressure of the Corona crisis, we, like many other family-owned companies, took on significantly more social responsibility and displayed unimagined improvisational skills. And in retrospect, we did very well with that!

We do not want to lose this entrepreneurial drive and spirit, which is focused on the here and now but is designed for sustainability. We want to maintain it in our employees, managers and committee work in the long term. If possible, we even want to expand it, for example by preparing our Corona activities internally as "role models" and transferring them to other areas of activity in our company.

Against this backdrop, we rubbed our eyes in amazement at how clumsily and insensitively to the public mood the major corporation Adidas tried to avoid paying rent in April 2020 - and received an incredible "shitstorm" for it. And how, despite this cautionary example, other companies repeatedly attracted negative attention as "crisis winners" in the further course of the year and properly tarnished their reputations. It's unbelievable how quickly you can weaken your good reputation by making the wrong decisions. And how massively this then also affects the figures in the business.

For us, it was already clear at the beginning of the Corona crisis: If the sensitivity and attention of the public increases, we have to keep a wary eye on our brand - understood as our "positive prejudice" in the market. In times of crisis, any entrepreneurial decision can quickly spiral into a "brand jam" and shatter a sensitive part of the trust capital that we regard as essential and decisive for the future viability of our family business.

Investing the business model sustainably

Fortunately, we were able to credibly demonstrate through energetic action that social responsibility for the community is important to us as a family business.

It certainly also helped that we had always designed our business model to be clean, transparent and sustainable. Based on values we live by. And focused on honestly creating substantial added value for our customers, our employees, the environment and us as owners. There are no systematic irregularities in our company that we would have to fear might one day be dragged into the light of day. We are protected in the best possible way against a sudden "image meltdown" caused by the crisis - as happened to the German meat producer Tönnies from Gütersloh in June 2020.

The fact that we are now benefiting considerably as an employer brand precisely because of our conservative and sustainability-oriented management culture and have been able to hire promising new employees with a progressive mindset in recent months was neither foreseeable nor intended. However, it is a nice side effect that encourages us to remain true to our values in the future and to consistently continue on our path.

Click here for part 1

Click here for part 2

Click here for part 3

Click here for part 4

Authors:

Christian Schiede has been advising and assisting entrepreneurial families and family businesses to strengthen cohesion, increase competitiveness and secure value since 2003. Contact: www.schiede.com; schiede@shpadvisors.com

Bastian Schneider has been helping entrepreneurs and management teams strengthen their brands from within and lead their organizations and businesses into the future from this perspective since 2000. In more than 30 industries. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Contact: www.brandleadership.ch; bastian.schneider@brandleadership.ch

The importance of work has different weightings in the personal value system of each individual: Some people work in order to live, i.e. to finance their livelihood. Others live in order to work. All of this is neither good nor bad per se, and it is not always a self-determined choice. For each person, therefore, work has a different meaning.

Work is a good thing, and working a lot is also a positive thing in our society for the most part. This is not necessarily accompanied by excessive demands or even a possible burnout. Those who work often and a lot can certainly do so with pleasure and experience fulfillment as a result. Even if the danger of workaholism lurks among those who do an above-average amount, this term tends to have a positive connotation. Only the increase of this leads to the actual work addiction and the border to a disease comes closer. What characterizes work addicts? They are people who show typical addictive behavior, i.e. they need more and more of one thing to get through the day. Thus, they are trapped in the continuous loop associated with it: Their entire self-esteem is based on their work, so they are no longer able to separate themselves from it, work compulsively and live a pronounced perfectionism.

Where does workaholism lurk?

People in modern society work much more than the generations before them in previous centuries. With the Enlightenment came a modern promise that extended through the industrial to the digital revolution to globalization: people will be freed from work. To this day, it has remained an assurance. In fact, in the meantime, rough, manual or repetitive work has been outsourced to machines or to the IT world. What remains astonishing, however, is that people - no sooner have they got rid of physically hard work - take back their lack of freedom with workaholism.

Work addiction is a form of dependence. One can no longer be without work and develops a high desire for the activity and the corresponding recognition through it. Achievement addiction is a part of this, one wants to prove something to oneself. Workaholism is described as an excessive need for work. In this state, important, other areas of life lose importance. Thus, social contacts gradually break down and the compulsion to define oneself through work continues to increase. The spiral sets in motion and, as with any addiction, the dose must be constantly increased for satisfaction. Eventually, this can lead to illness. Those who permanently work more than 50 hours per week are already very close to workaholism.

Addiction to prestige, performance and work

The causes of work addiction are often to be found in exaggerated commitment. Executives and self-employed people are often affected, who work so hard and experience a high level of satisfaction from successes and results, encouragement and further orders or projects. If this remains a temporary phase and an appropriate balance is found, this can be seen as a positive thing. However, it becomes risky when this high level of commitment is closely linked to the personal value system and the manifestation of self-esteem. Those who link their own value to work performance are more quickly affected by work addiction. From the compulsion to want to do everything perfectly in order to appear valuable to oneself and others, the ability to separate the essential from the non-essential is lost. In order to get everything done at all, there are extra shifts at night and extra work on the weekend.

Therapists explain the fact that someone tends to such a form of addiction at all on the basis of upbringing, heredity, personal life history and social circumstances; influences from society also play a role. But what symptoms do you use to recognize work addiction?

• You think more and more, even outside working hours, about your work.
• You think about where you can procure even more time for your work and sacrifice free time, hobbies and social contacts for it.
• They develop a high degree of perfectionism and lose the ability to set priorities.
• You feel that you are basically working too much.
• You do some neat planning and find that you always spend more time working than you intended.
• Due to time constraints, you put off higher-level tasks, which puts even more pressure on you.
• They forget appointments and can't explain it.
• You feel angry about your circumstances and experience feelings of guilt or the first signs of depression.
• You develop physical withdrawal symptoms when you can't dedicate yourself to work (wi-fi free zones, illness, vacation with family, etc.).
• They have difficulty making decisions and increase the workload to accommodate everything and everyone.
• You doggedly pursue goals or plans that you want to push through at any cost.

 Tips against emerging workaholism

If you want to recognize whether you are at risk, the first step is to be honest with yourself. Do the first symptoms show up regularly? It makes a difference whether you work almost around the clock for four weeks on a project or whether you display the corresponding behaviors over a period of several months or years. Start with a binding work plan for yourself:

• Involve friends and family, and allow them to be explicit about when you are working too much.
• Be very rigid with leisure appointments, so embrace soccer night with your friends and your child's birthday party as dutifully as you do your business appointments.
• Turn off mobile devices in the evening and create islands of time when you're not working.
• Learn to trust others - this creates the opportunity to delegate.
• Learn not to make your self-esteem solely dependent on work.

About the author
Stefan Häseli is a communications trainer, keynote speaker, moderator and author of several books. For years, the communications expert has accompanied numerous companies up to the highest boards of multinational corporations. He lectures at universities and colleges in the field of communication. As an expert, he appears on radio and TV stations. always takes a stand when communication is playing a decisive role somewhere in the world, such as the first few weeks of "Donald Trump" or the look at Boris Johnson's communication behavior.

https://stefan-haeseli.com/ 

In recent years, the Swiss FinTech industry has developed from a niche market into a relevant provider of innovative solutions for the Swiss financial industry. The majority of companies offer solutions in the area of investment management and banking infrastructure. Their business models are predominantly based on technologies from the areas of process digitization, automation and robotics. This Swiss FinTech market also grew last year: at the end of 2020, a total of 405 Swiss FinTech companies were based in Switzerland. This represents an increase of 23 companies (plus six percent) compared to 2019, according to a recent study by the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

Swiss FinTech market: growth slows down

Despite the rising number of FinTech companies based in Switzerland, there are also initial signs of a slowdown in the sector's development in 2020. "Since 2015, the growth rate has never been this low," says Thomas Ankenbrand, study director and lecturer in Banking and Finance at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Other indicators pointing to a slowdown in the Swiss FinTech sector include the median total capitalization of companies falling and the median number of employees remaining constant. A look at the workforce of Swiss FinTech companies also shows that the proportion of their employees who are not based in Switzerland but abroad is rising steadily. At the end of 2020, this group already accounted for more than a third of all employees of Swiss FinTech companies.

The good conditions in Switzerland are tending to deteriorate

Switzerland continues to fare well in an international comparison with regard to the prevailing framework conditions for FinTech companies, according to the FinTech Hub Ranking of the HSLU study. "However, conditions have tended to deteriorate in recent years compared to the other leading FinTech ecosystems," explains Ankenbrand. This is particularly true of social and economic environmental factors. Further analysis shows that the quality of the environment has a clear positive correlation with the size of a FinTech sector. "Taking care of these general conditions is not only important for the resident FinTech sector, but also for the Swiss financial industry as a whole," says the FinTech expert.

FinTech is slowly arriving in the real world

A large part of the volumes, whether in payment transactions, loans or investments, is still handled by traditional financial institutions and individual established FinTech companies. It can be seen that Swiss banks have become more efficient over time. Gradually, the effect of digitalization is becoming clear. This is due, among other things, to FinTech solutions, the majority of which, according to the findings of the study, are aimed at business-to-business transactions, which also includes innovative solutions for established banks. In general, traditional financial institutions have been able to increase volumes under management while keeping costs stable. "However, this development is not reflected on the revenue side," said Thomas Ankenbrand. According to the study's authors, this indicates that the efficiency gains are being passed on directly to customers.

Open Banking is realized via platforms

Driven by pressure on business models, technological advances, changing customer needs and regulatory requirements, open banking, in which banks and third-party providers exchange certain data or services with each other, is considered a significant trend in the financial industry. However, a survey of IT managers at Swiss banks presented in the study shows that the pressure to open up bank interfaces as well as the need for corresponding solutions, especially in the business-to-consumer area, is relatively low. Other obstacles to the implementation of open banking solutions are the high costs and effort involved, as well as concerns about IT security and the lack of standardization. The latter is, at least in part, due to the fact that Open Banking in Switzerland is market-driven and not imposed via binding guidelines (PSD2) as in the European Union. As a result, various platforms have emerged that enable the secure and standardized exchange of data and services. These platforms are also increasingly being used by banks, especially in corporate banking.

"Skin in the game matters"

Venture capital activity is the indicator with the highest significance in the FinTech hub ranking. In this respect, Switzerland is basically well positioned. Indicators of this are the volume of venture capital invested in the FinTech sector and the low level of difficulty perceived by Swiss FinTech companies in raising new funding. In total, the sector was able to raise around 260 million Swiss francs in new capital in 2020. Total capitalization is also important for individual companies. In addition to revenues and the number of employees, this shows a significant correlation with the valuation of a FinTech company, as shown by a quantitative analysis in the study.

Source: Lucerne University

Companies with greater gender diversity in leadership positions and that also employ more women in high-paying, high-revenue positions create more positive employee experiences. This is shown in a recently published analysis by Towers Watson. Companies with leadership structures that support diversity (e.g., with a chief diversity officer) are perceived by employees as more inclusive, the study found. "Companies that show a strong commitment to inclusion see a payoff across the entire organization," Krisztina Csedő, head of Talents & Rewards at Willis Towers Watson in Switzerland, commented on the finding. "In the current challenging environment, gender diversity in leadership positions can help companies provide employees with the much-needed experience of trust, support and the ability to have a voice."

Switzerland has some catching up to do in terms of gender diversity

The study by Willis Towers Watson shows that Switzerland still has some catching up to do in terms of gender diversity. Women are still overrepresented in various areas, such as business support positions. These include, for example, administrative services, HR services or corporate communication. They are underrepresented at executive and manager level, as well as in sales and technical support. This trend is particularly visible in high-tech companies or those in the financial sector.

"We are currently conducting a large number of pay equity analyses. In addition, there is an urgent need to review HR processes to eliminate systematic biases against women," says Krisztina Csedő. "For example, women who are hired at a lower salary than men with the same qualifications have great difficulty making up for this difference later."

Visible industry differences

A certain variation in gender distribution by function and by sector can also be seen. While administrative services, HR or communications departments employ a large proportion of women in all industries, marketing in the high-tech sector, data science in the FS sector or finance positions in both the high-tech and FS sectors have an even lower proportion of women than the typical - already low - proportion in other industries.

Gender diversity promotes career development

Among the main findings of the global analysis, which also apply to Switzerland:

• Companies with more women in leadership and management positions have more positive employee experiences in terms of overall career development, fair pay, skill building, trust in leaders, and management support. Employees in these organizations also express higher levels of engagement and a greater likelihood of staying. The benefits are particularly evident when there are at least one-third women in management and one-fifth in executive ranks. For example, companies with at least one-fifth women in management perform 12 percentage points better on a measure of career development than companies with fewer women in management (73% positive versus 61% positive). Similarly, companies with at least one-fifth women in leadership positions perform 10 percentage points better on measures of fair pay (62% vs. 52%) and likelihood of retention (71% vs. 61%).

• Companies with a higher percentage of women among the highest-paid employees (top 10 %) have more employees who feel they are part of an innovative, market-leading organization and also have a voice. These companies are more likely to offer women's health and wellness programs and pursue retention of female customers, which is further evidence of the company's commitment to how employees experience the company.

• Companies that promote more women generate more positive employee experiences in terms of workplace fit, confidence in leaders, and overall support for inclusion. In addition, these companies typically offer financial literacy and leadership development programs for women.

• Companies with diversity-focused leaders, such as chief diversity officers, and action plans for women in leadership are viewed by employees as more effective in creating an inclusive work environment that also gives employees a better understanding of their goals and job roles. Companies with a CDO or equivalent leader have an 11 percentage point advantage in inclusion (84% positive vs. 73% positive) over companies without this role.

Source: Towers Watson

He will not come after all: Edward Snowden, probably the most famous whistleblower in the world, will not come after all. as originally announced will take part in the Swiss Cyber Security Days (SCSD) as a special guest. The organizing committee has decided against the digital appearance of the American whistleblower, as it said in a media release on February 26, 2021. After Edward Snowden had already appeared virtually as a speaker at ETH in January 2020, the organizers of the Swiss Cyber Security Days 2021 were pleased about his promise to appear virtually as a speaker. Now, however, he has withdrawn: The participants and the environment of the Swiss Cyber Security Days would, however, be fundamentally different from that of ETH. After a second critical analysis, this led to the decision to forego Edward Snowden's undoubtedly attractive appearance.

Despite all this, the Swiss Cyber Security Days can boast a rich program. The event will take place purely virtually on March 10 and 11, 2021. As the Swiss platform for cyber security, it has set itself the goal of presenting essential topics that signify the relevant challenges in the field of cyber in our society. The focus is on politics, business, education and research.

Swiss Cyber Security Days

Bank Valiant and insurer Vaudoise launched a mortgage cooperation on March 2, 2021. The insurer Vaudoise will continue to advise its customers on all matters relating to the financing of residential properties and would like to meet the expectations of its customers in the mortgage sector even better, according to a corresponding media release. In the future, the insurance company will refer more complex financing directly to the financial services provider Valiant and its specialists. According to the two companies, this is intended to create an improved customer experience. It should also work well culturally: Due to their size, corporate culture and also geographically, the two service providers would complement each other well, the announcement continues. The promise is a solid partnership in the service of customer satisfaction.

Valiant and Vaudoise: Complementary offer

Vaudoise - which is one of the ten largest private insurers in Switzerland and was founded in 1895 - is supplementing its own existing mortgage offering with this collaboration. SMEs and private customers will now have a wider choice for mortgage financing for their businesses and projects. "The collaboration with Valiant gives us the opportunity to offer our clients comprehensive mortgage solutions," says Jean-Daniel Laffely, CEO of Vaudoise Insurance and head of over 1,650 employees, including 100 apprentices and people in training. The insurance company has cooperative roots and passes on part of its profits to its customers in the form of premium refunds. In 2020, this amounted to 34 million Swiss francs.

Cooperation promises greater business volume

On the other hand, Valiant gains a new partnership and can increase its business volume thanks to Vaudoise's well-developed distribution capabilities. "I am looking forward to the cooperation with Vaudoise, which is a very good fit for Valiant," says Ewald Burgener, CEO of Valiant. "The fact that Vaudoise and Valiant are leveraging synergies gives us additional options for further development."

The independent financial services provider Valiant serves clients exclusively in Switzerland and is locally anchored at 97 locations in 13 cantons. The balance sheet total amounts to CHF 33.2 billion. The bank employs over 1,000 people, including 80 trainees.

Source and further information: Valiant / Vaudoise

I recently conducted a survey on leadership among my clients and readers and was positively taken with the number and quality of responses. The question was: "What is your biggest frustration in leadership right now? In other words: What is causing you the most problems, and that's independent of the current challenges because of Corona, physical separation, etc.?" One of the points that runs like a thread through the responses is: people's unwillingness to change.

Willingness to change: an old theme

The subject is as old as mankind itself: Those who want to change something struggle against the persistence of the masses. You could also say: This is precisely why we need leaders.

But here comes the unpleasant truth: If you're a manager complaining about your team's unwillingness to change, you haven't done your homework.

The good news is that this can be changed. There are mechanisms for systematically increasing the willingness to change within a team and a company.

Create hunger for change with three steps

Here are three fundamental steps for doing so (that most don't think about enough):

1. Foundations: Many leaders lack a comprehensive understanding of why people change and why they do not. And more importantly, how they can (and cannot) influence others' willingness to change. The first thing you need is a solid foundation in psychology. You can and must acquire this as a leader if you want to increase the willingness to change in others.
2. Self-leadership: It is also interesting to ask how willing you are to change. Because change involves letting go of habits and taking new risks. Scrapping rules and trusting people. In other words, do you lead yourself with a high willingness to change and take risks? Or are you yourself more likely to follow well-worn paths?
3. Team Leadership: The third step is to use strategies and tactics to persuade others (and also to select the right people for the team). This includes things like an emotionally compelling vision, confidence in taking the first steps, recognition of even small successes, and more. Importantly, this third step cannot occur without the first two.

If you apply these three points consistently, you can massively increase your people's willingness to change. Otherwise, it will be difficult. And: this has absolutely nothing to do with home office and Corona.

To the author:
Volkmar Völzke is a success maximizer. Book author. Consultant. Coach. Speaker. www.volkmarvoelzke.ch

We never wanted to become a virtual family business. But with the shutdown, we became one more quickly and more extensively than the family, shareholders and management could ever have imagined. However, we never came close to Goldman Sachs' 98% "home office" quota in April 2020.

Most of our "homeworkers" were positively surprised. Again and again we heard in 2020: "It works much better than we expected". Also from the managers. The trust they had placed in their employees was not disappointed. On the contrary. Working productively, flexibly and agilely with colleagues or our partners and customers from home or another location has therefore also become an absolute matter of course today - more than a year later. In most areas. We do not want to and will not scale this back or call it into question again. Here, the crisis has also helped us to bring our traditional management and working methods up to date.

Caution "System Confusion

At the top of our top 3 list of challenges, however, is still cleaning up the "system clutter" in our IT system landscape, which we caused ourselves last year through our improvisations in response to the sudden home office compulsion.

In particular, our goal now is to transfer everything into a decentralized, efficient, secure, resilient and future-open IT infrastructure. That's a lot of adjectives, but we don't want to miss any of them. The digitization initiatives in particular will benefit from our significantly higher and more differentiated requirements here. Before the crisis, it was much more difficult for us to make any progress at all - which, from today's perspective, is almost inconceivable.

The family, shareholders and supervisory bodies have also taken a big step forward in terms of digitalization. Today, we have a governance collaboration platform on which all relevant persons have regulated and secure access to all important documents, can organize tap-proof telephone conferences, sign documents, and meet in encrypted "VR lounges.

When we contacted the first solution providers, we were taken with the level of technical performance, process competence and risk expertise. The implementation has taken our committee work to a new level in terms of efficiency, transparency and crisis resilience. With our last Annual General Meeting, we were able to put our pilot system into operation - with consistently positive feedback from users. Also from the older generations.

Investments and funding sources for greater resilience

It was easier for us to invest in this because we had previously freed up a considerable sum in trade fair, event and travel budgets - which were still firmly calculated into the budget before social distancing, worldwide travel warnings and assembly bans.

We expect additional funds in the coming years from the transformation of large parts of our presence workspaces into virtual workplaces. The associated savings in rents and leases are an important source of funding for us to make further investments in strengthening our resilience to crises. Today, we are all a little more in tune with Andrew Grove and his mantra: "Only the paranoid survive." For us, the question today is no longer whether there will be another global crisis. But only: When something like this will occur again in a globally networked world. And then we will be prepared!

Focus on customer needs

In the virtualization of our global sites and the associated adjustments to structures and processes, we are guided to a significant extent by the significantly increased requirements and needs of our customers.

Security, flexibility and partnership remain the focus here. It goes without saying that many of our customers still have to operate in crisis mode and cannot always act as quickly, directly and clearly as we are accustomed to - but they always receive the highest performance values and service levels from us.

We have found out: If you go through the crisis together, nothing will break you apart in a hurry! And at the end of the day, what matters most to us is the resilience of our customer relationships.

(to be continued)

Click here for part 1

Click here for part 2

Click here for part 3

Click here for part 5

Authors:

Christian Schiede has been advising and assisting entrepreneurial families and family businesses to strengthen cohesion, increase competitiveness and secure value since 2003. Contact: www.schiede.com; schiede@shpadvisors.com

Bastian Schneider has been helping entrepreneurs and management teams strengthen their brands from within and lead their organizations and businesses into the future from this perspective since 2000. In more than 30 industries. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Contact: www.brandleadership.ch; bastian.schneider@brandleadership.ch

As part of an annual study, Capgemini surveyed 144 executives across the DACH region in September and October last year. Most participants were from the automotive and public sectors. The companies surveyed were those with revenues generally in excess of €1 billion per year. Questions around IT budgeting, use of smart technologies and cloud, and key technology trends were examined. The survey also focused on the impact of the Corona pandemic on IT.

Few budget cuts

The question asked was how the Corona pandemic had affected investments in IT, for example. In view of the pandemic, major cuts in IT budgets would actually have been expected. In fact, however, only just under 15 percent of participants in Germany, Austria and Switzerland are reducing IT spending overall, which is roughly the same as the previous year. A larger proportion of respondents (around 27 percent) are freezing IT budgets. That is a good 5 percentage points more than 12 months ago. By contrast, the proportion of those increasing their budgets is still 48.4 percent, compared with 63.1 percent last year. Looking only at Switzerland, the situation is similar, but slightly more companies will have to cut their IT budgets this year than in neighboring countries. Investments were made in particular in the digitization of processes - for example, in ordering processes, service offerings, but also in production.

Non-European cloud services

When asked about the use of cloud services, it became apparent that non-European cloud providers currently have a head start on the market: They provide around 28 percent of the cloud-based IT services used by companies and public authorities in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. In contrast, only a good 23 percent are purchased from European providers. Almost 45 percent of the study participants who use cloud services from non-European providers want to increase their capacities with European providers in the coming years. They justify the shift primarily with data protection compliance and the desire to increase data sovereignty.

24 percent of large companies use smart technologies intensively

The use of smart technologies has increased slightly in the last 12 months, but is slightly below the previous year's level among large companies. It is mainly users from medium-sized companies with sales of up to one billion euros who have expanded their activities in the past year. A good 8 percent of them now use smart technologies intensively or very intensively. However, this rate is still low compared with the top 50 and top 100 companies, at around 24 percent.

Success balances of specialist and IT areas converge

CIOs prioritize the areas of application for intelligent technologies similarly to the previous year. Predicting the behavior of machines, customers or markets tops the list. They also appear to be rated more positively by users than complex solutions such as recommendation systems or predicting the behavior of machines, customers or markets. As in the previous year, CIOs consider the use of intelligent technologies in their company to be less successful than their business colleagues. Since their euphoria has waned somewhat, their assessments are now closer together.

Approval of regulation and external control increases in some areas

Last year, study participants overwhelmingly rejected government or external control in connection with smart technologies, preferring voluntary commitments. This has now changed slightly: For example, approval of government regulation of smart technology application scenarios, while still low, is slightly higher than last year. External verification of measures to protect learning systems against manipulation also now finds more supporters. At the same time, the development of a company's own ethical framework for the use of smart technologies has lost support.

Technology trends: IT trends 2021 focus on security

According to the study, the most important topic in IT trends 2021 is Production Safety and Production Security. Due to the increasing digitization of production processes and a number of high-consequence cyberattacks on industrial companies last year, risk awareness in this area has apparently risen sharply. In second to fifth place are predictive analytics, protection against threats from the use of IoT-enabled devices, DevOps, and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) without the support of
smart technologies.

Source and further information: Capgemini

The Covid 19 crisis has impressively shown how important digitization is, especially for the economy. A study by BFH Wirtschaft shows that Swiss companies which, for example, have a well-developed digital communication structure or offer their employees digital working models suffered less from the pandemic in March 2020 (more information about this study).

Digital fitness test shows where measures are needed

But how "digital" is a company? While progress is obvious in some areas (e.g., the existence of an infrastructure that enables home offices), this question quickly becomes complex in other areas. This is where the digital fitness test comes in, making the topic tangible.

The test, which was developed under the direction of Prof. Dr. Reinhard Riedl from the Digital Enabling Institute, consists of an online questionnaire and can be answered either as a short version with seven questions or as a detailed version with around 35 questions. After completing the questionnaire, the companies receive an evaluation. On the one hand, this shows them areas in which they are so digitally fit that strengthening them can create a direct competitive advantage. On the other hand, the results also show further concrete measures with which decisive digital progress can be achieved.

Free service with consulting offer

The digital fitness test is a free service for Swiss SMEs. The results are treated confidentially. After the test has been carried out, the experts at BFH Wirtschaft offer a comprehensive range of consulting services tailored to the individual needs of the companies (e.g. workshops, evaluation of project plans, development of a transformation strategy).

For more information and a link to participate in the digital fitness test, please visit here.