Facing a changing world of work with confidence: EvoFrame is researching individual solutions for innovative and adaptive organizations of tomorrow I Siemensstadt Square

22/10/2024

Social and technological change is putting strong pressure on companies to change. For the individual employee, this means a working landscape that is constantly becoming less transparent and predictable.

The publicly funded project EvoFrame “Development of an evolutionary, human-centered framework for change-competent organizations”, in collaboration with the Werner-von-Siemens Centre for Industry and Science e.V. at the Zukunftsort Siemensstadt Square, is creating a framework that supports, enables and promotes the adaptability of companies and their employees. This calls for new solutions.

The interdisciplinary team, which consists of industrial companies, SMEs and scientific institutions, combines new approaches to human-technology interaction from practice with occupational health, sociological and psychological findings, as well as influences from futurology.

Source: YOUSE GmbH

Reacting to external influences in a timely manner by means of anticipatory early detection

To perceive changes in an organization or in one’s own workplace, forward-looking thinking and action is required. Everyone can influence the future within their own sphere of action and counteract the pressure to change. The capability to deal with and adapt to future opportunities lays the foundation for an adaptable organization.

With this in mind, the project teams of YOUSE GmbH and NextGenerationWorX GmbH identified key drivers of change, i.e. trends or causes that influence the future, and based on this, created suitable short workshop formats for companies that enable the application of future-oriented scenarios in their own organisation.

To find out how adaptable each individual and how the adaptation possibilities of an organization are developed, the project partners worked with different approaches:

  • a systemic constellation,
  • a values workshop in the context of ethical, social and societal research, and
  • development of the “6×6 of organizational development” for organizations.

These concepts serve not only to build future skills but also to strengthen the adaptability of employees in organizations.

Source: YOUSE GmbH

Application partner needed for the Charité

As part of an empirical study, the Occupational Medicine Center at the Charité is looking for companies that are currently undergoing a change process and are willing to have it scientifically monitored. The aim is to document the receptiveness to change, as well as health-related risk and protective factors among employees. With the help of a short GDPR-compliant online questionnaire (approx. 20 minutes) and a follow-up survey, data-based implications for promoting willingness to change are derived. The results are presented in a workshop and can be used to optimize transformation processes. The scientific support is provided by experts from Charité and is free of charge.

All requirements, benefits and information can be found at https://wvsc.berlin/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Charite_Flyer.pdf. Interested organizations can reach out to us at evoframe@charite.de at any time.

Outlook: Implementation of a demonstrator and workshop concepts at the Zukunftsort Siemensstadt Square

As the project progresses, the construction of a demonstrator, hosted by project partner Werner-von-Siemens Centre for Industry and Science e.V. at the Zukunftsort Siemensstadt Square, is planned for early 2025. The intention is to map an assembly process through a collaboration between human+robot and avatar. Pi4 provides a suitable robot for this purpose. Siemens AG is developing the avatar solution. In doing so, the project consortium is addressing an important topic: the shortage of skilled workers. Using an automatic employee selection process, the demonstrator enables qualification at the workplace. Untrained specialists can be involved and qualified in unfamiliar processes.

In addition to constructing the demonstrator, the project partners are developing, testing and evaluating various workshop formats that aim to promote adaptability and to strengthen both individual employees and the organization as a whole in dealing with change.

Funding notice

The EvoFrame project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and managed by the Project Management Agency Karlsruhe (PTKA) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

Find the official project website here: https://wvsc.berlin/projekt/evoframe/

EvoFrame project partners: Siemens Energy, Siemens AG, Technische Universität Berlin, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, TresCom Technology GmbH, pi4_robotics GmbH, IBO, IBO Digital, YOUSE GmbH, NextGenerationWorX GmbH, Werner-von-Siemens Centre for Industry and Science e.V.

Associated partners: 5th Industry, Unternehmensverbände in Berlin und Brandenburg e.V.