Review of the Eastern Switzerland Personnel Day: The world of work in the "reality gap"

The fact that the world is moving faster and faster can no longer be denied. In her welcome address, presenter Sabine Bianchi referred to a study from 2007, which showed that the walking speed of pedestrians worldwide had increased by 10 percent. Today, it is probably even faster.

Personnel development: a management task

Personnel development must also keep pace with the increasing speed of change. Accordingly, the theme of the 21st Eastern Switzerland Personnel Day, which took place on September 18, 2025 in OLMA Hall 9.1 in St.Gallen, was "Personnel development in the modern working world". The Eastern Switzerland HR Day is one of the most important HR conferences in Eastern Switzerland. It aims to bring together HR experts, HR specialists and HR managers as well as managers from SMEs to discuss current and fundamental issues. Dr. Kerstin Helfmann, lecturer at OST - Ostschweizer Fachhochschule, and Silvia Coiro, Head of Diversity at schilling partners ag, introduced the conference. They noted that personnel development begins with recruitment. One of the speakers' key messages was that we need to move away from rigid job profiles and focus more on the development potential of applicants and employees. The future lies in skills-based recruitment.

The filling of key positions in particular must be approached strategically: "A board of directors that does not plan the succession of the management is not doing its job properly," says Silvia Coiro. What's more, personnel development is a fundamental management task, as line managers are also required to identify potential successors for their position.

Learning and culture: inextricably linked

What role do learning culture and leadership play in personnel development? This was the topic of the panel discussion with Christof Oswald, Head of HR Bühler, André Schmid, Head of HR Empa and Marko Draguljic, Head of Learning & Development at the Sefar Group. The conversation quickly turned to the importance of values. As Christof Oswald emphasized, these must be communicated from the very beginning, starting with the apprentices. And this is a central management task. André Schmid referred to the innovative climate that prevails at Empa, "supported by values". However, a growing problem is the decreasing resilience, especially of young employees. The participants agreed that developing this resilience and also more personal responsibility is becoming an increasingly important task for management. This is primarily achieved by conveying a sense of purpose and trust and allowing freedom.

Christian Heiniger, Head of Learning & Development at Hilti, then gave a concrete insight into a company's learning culture. This is based on the pillars "Learn", "Reflect" and "Perform", anchored in a corporate culture that unites purpose, a clear corporate strategy and people. In this sense, shaping the culture at Hilti is a top priority for management, the Board of Directors and the owners. Prioritizing learning and culture is something that pays off in the long term, says Heiniger. And the expectation for managers at Hilti is also clear: develop employees and achieve great results.

An AI-dominated future?

Jacqueline Gasser-Beck, Head of the Teaching Innovation Lab at the University of St. Gallen, spoke about the fact that technology also has an important role to play in staff development and continuing education. Using a case study, she showed how various AI tools can be used by lecturers and students today. Artificial intelligence also offers more and more potential applications for HR, as the speaker explained. However, she always referred to the "human in the loop": humans are crucial for checking the AI-generated output. "Evaluation and critical questioning are tasks that are less at risk of being replaced by AI," said Gasser-Beck. This is in stark contrast to analytical and increasingly creative jobs.

Sven Gábor Jánszky, Head of the Zukunftsinstitut 2b AHEAD ThinkTank, ignited a whole firework display of future prospects at the end of the conference. AI will play an increasingly central role in this. "At some point, there may be more humanoid robots and AI agents than humans," he said. He referred to a "reality gap" that exists between linear technology development, as we have experienced to date, and the exponential development driven by the technology leaders. "Our problem is that we place too much trust in our experiences from the past. But the future does not come from the past," says Jánszky. He sees the "predictive economy", an economic model in which business decisions are guided by forecast-based data analysis and AI, as a way out of this reality gap. And this will inevitably change work in HR and demand adaptive processes. Jánszky replied to those in the audience who were perhaps wondering whether they should look forward to this future: "It's coming anyway". Be that as it may, the date of the next Eastern Switzerland HR Day has been set: September 10, 2026.

More information: www.personaltag.ch