"Future of HR" dialogue series – Interview with Dr. Lena Lindemann 
CHRO Ergo Group AG

By Nina Feuersinger

In our "Future of HR" dialogue, we spoke with Dr. Lena Lindemann about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and demographic change on job profiles and skills. For her, promoting a culture of lifelong learning is one of the key tasks of HR.

Nina Feuersinger: Europe is facing a raft of far-reaching challenges: artificial intelligence , political upheaval, the skills shortage and rising labor costs. Which of the current megatrends are having the biggest impact on the Ergo workforce?

Dr. Lena Lindemann: Internationally, we are primarily concerned with the digitalization and artificial intelligence megatrends and how they are impacting our business model. In Europe and especially in Germany – our biggest market, where we have around 13,000 employees – we are looking closely at the skills shortage and demographic change. Almost a third of the insurance industry's workforce are expected to enter retirement by 2030. So, it is very important for us to identify at an early stage what skills, abilities and knowledge will be lost as a result and which of those will gain importance or acquire a new relevance in the future – partly through the influence of AI. What are we doing to address these megatrends? We are focusing on two targeted measures: Firstly, we are investing heavily in artificial intelligence and new technologies in order to become more productive and achieve just as much or even more with fewer people. Secondly, we are focusing on sourcing and recruiting because we firmly believe we can attract the best talent by giving ourselves a strong position on the job market and being a highly attractive employer.

Nina Feuersinger: You have already touched on the topic of future skills that people will need. Other sectors, such as the pharmaceutical industry or the automotive sector, are seeing skills rather than roles being strategically identified and steered to an increasing extent. How are you dealing with this issue?

Dr. Lena Lindemann: Strategic HR planning has become much more important for us against this backdrop. It's not just about quantifying supply and demand and working out how gaps can be closed through digitalization, recruiting and acquisitions. It's also about the qualitative assessment of job clusters, determining future requirements and comparing them against the status quo. Our experience from our HR work and from the various departments shows that identifying future skills is important but also a major challenge, as descriptions such as "digital skills" or "problem-solving skills" are often very abstract and vague. For me, assessing future skills in detail is therefore a key challenge and a central task for HR, which we are tackling together with the different departments in our company.

Nina Feuersinger: Recent analyses have found that white-collar jobs in offices are more affected by the impact of artificial intelligence than blue-collar jobs in areas like production. With the insurance industry having a particularly high proportion of white-collar jobs, how are you experiencing the impact of AI within your business?

Dr. Lena Lindemann: We can confirm those analysis findings. Artificial intelligence can make our work more efficient and more effective. Tasks within claims handling, at the customer interface, and also in functions such as Finance, Legal and HR can be simplified considerably, and even partly replaced. At the same time, the new ways of working with AI will require new tasks and new jobs, some of which we have not even heard of today. For example, I anticipate that in the not too distant future we will have AI-based personal assistants who will take over a lot of organizational tasks for us.

Nina Feuersinger: The agents you've just referred to are the next big wave of development in artificial intelligence. However, what we are seeing with our clients is that just introducing a technology is not enough to bring the desired efficiency gains. Processes, structures and, above all, employees and managers need to change. How important do you consider AI to be in a leadership context?

Dr. Lena Lindemann: I believe that the interface between humans and AI will be a key leadership issue in the future. How do you manage machines? How do you involve machines in people management? These questions may sound like science fiction, but there are already some examples happening in practice: Defined leadership standards can already be fed into an AI that provides specific recommendations for action in conflict or leadership situations. For example, in a practical trial, a bot gave me helpful suggestions on how to handle a conflict situation between two employees and coached me accordingly. We are right at the beginning of this evolution, but I am convinced we are going to see a lot of change in HR management in this context.

Nina Feuersinger: Speaking of leadership, you developed a new Leadership Framework. What does it regulate and what elements are particularly important to you at Ergo?

Dr. Lena Lindemann: Our Leadership Framework has four pillars. Central to it is the definition of a leadership standard that applies across all areas. Our aim is to set a lean, uniform and clearly structured standard for leadership situations through continuous, structured dialogue between teams, managers and individual employees. The second pillar concerns the strategic direction of leadership development. Here, we are setting priorities and deliberately focusing on topics that are strategically relevant to us right now. These are then driven forward by all of our leaders - from the Management Board to the Group Managers. Our shared leadership culture is the third pillar of the Leadership Framework. It not only supports standardization but also helps us communicate uniform messages to our people. The fourth pillar comprises diagnostics-based selection and development of leadership personnel at all levels. Especially in times when many far-reaching change processes are taking place, it is particularly important to get people on board with transformations, to get them moving and to work together towards a common goal. The balance between performance and leadership must always be maintained. That is the focus of our diagnostics.

Nina Feuersinger: You have headed up Ergo's HR work as Chief Human Resources Officer since 2022. What other topics are you currently dealing with in the HR organization?

Dr. Lena Lindemann: We have defined four pillars within the strategic HR agenda. The first is about positioning Ergo as an employer. This includes both the brand as a whole and recruiting target group specifically. In addition to specialist staff and experts, apprentices and trainees are a particularly important target group for us. The second pillar goes by the name of "Grow" and is aimed at global talent management and our employees worldwide. It focuses in particular on how ways of working are exemplified across countries and companies. The Leadership Framework we already mentioned is part of the third pillar. The focus here is on leadership, people and performance management. And all of this is based on strategic HR planning and HR analytics. In order to make well-founded HR decisions, we need high-quality data and state-of-the-art IT solutions for HR.

Nina Feuersinger: Another important topic is global talent management. Employee development is of paramount importance in the future skills context. At the same time, employee development is often seen as exclusively a leadership task. How do you manage to provide key impetus here as an HR department?

Dr. Lena Lindemann: Particularly in the context of talent development, it is important to empower the entire organization. Skills must be fostered across the board, regardless of which function they are found in within the company. We want to embed technology skills and a digital mindset at all levels through targeted upskilling and reskilling. Strategies such as digital first or digital only underline this priority and are closely linked to our business strategy. HR plays a key role in this by developing and implementing suitable training programs.

Nina Feuersinger: Finally, what top issues do you see coming up on the HR horizon in the future?

Dr. Lena Lindemann: In addition to the topics already mentioned, lifelong learning will be increasingly important. We need a new understanding of job security and at the same time a personal mindset of wanting and needing to develop ourselves further. I recently came across a nice image in this context: A bird on a branch doesn't worry about whether the branch might break – it trusts that it can fly. Translated across to learning and skills, this means trusting that you can acquire new skills and develop yourself further instead of remaining in a fixed role. Our biggest task in HR is to foster a corporate culture that firmly integrates lifelong learning and the acquisition of new skills.

Nina Feuersinger: Thank you very much for your time today.