Work 4.0 makes it possible to work much more flexibly, as employees can access work materials via cloud solutions regardless of time and location. This offers enormous advantages for both sides, especially for concentrated and focused work. Exchanging information on work statuses or results via video conferencing tools is becoming increasingly commonplace.

Nevertheless, decentralized collaboration in modern teams is not a foregone conclusion. Teams need regularly accepted and practiced coordination routines in order to be able to organize their work autonomously in a decentralized yet collaborative manner. Hybrid settings are also needed, especially for interdisciplinary exchange between different teams. If such meetings are thoughtfully designed, the office of the future will transform from a place of work to a hub for co-creation and co-working, real interpersonal relationships, and genuine corporate culture.

Meaningful leadership means involving employees and, for example, explaining the context and significance of planned changes for the purpose of the company. According to this understanding, informing employees is not sufficient. In the organizational context, it is also rarely sufficient to explain a work assignment and its meaning well – ideally, the goals of an organizational area are also developed together with the team and its contribution to value creation is defined collaboratively.

Especially for managing decentralized teams, it is important that the meaning and significance of the self-organized activities for the company’s success are clear. This strengthens employee motivation and facilitates communication on the results achieved.

The targeted promotion of self-responsibility, self-determination and self-organization requires trust in the performance of employees and appreciation of their performance. Transparent involvement, which unites the development of organizational goals as well as the personal goals of employees, strengthens the organization.

To ensure that New Work and Work 4.0 do not remain abstract concepts, organizations should create temporal and spatial freedom to test new methods of collaboration, new architectural concepts, new leadership models and new production processes. It should be borne in mind that anyone who tries out new things also makes mistakes. Organizations should practice a culture of imperfection and promote fault tolerance within a defined framework.

Networking and a higher degree of automation of production facilities in smart factories, as well as the sensible use of robotics, are enabling more and more digital work, while physically demanding tasks are dwindling.

For the step from conventional manufacturing to the networked factory to succeed, people, technology and organization must be neatly coordinated. This is the only way to realize the potential of digitization, such as flexibility, innovation and better overall results.

A one-sided fixation on technical innovations often generates resistance in the workforce instead of acceptance. It is important to bring people along. Employees, their workplaces and helpful technologies in the value creation process must not be viewed in isolation from one another.

The world’s knowledge has long since exceeded the learning capacity of individuals. Organizations that enable their employees to learn from each other, to jointly expand their skills in a targeted manner, and thereby also to develop personally benefit from this exchange of knowledge and experience. Interdisciplinary networking is of enormous importance for lifelong learning.

Organizations that succeed in interlinking human resources and organizational development manage change and deal with uncertainty and growing complexity with greater ease. Customized learning architectures that enable coordinated personnel and organizational development prove to be helpful here.

Communication routines and (virtual) spaces that enable continuous self-reflection and thus self-renewal of work teams, including through “healthy” discarding of outdated or dysfunctional conditions, are gaining in importance in the context of constant change.

In networked organizations, work-life blending is replacing the long conflicted search for a work-life balance. What used to apply to business people has become the norm for a large part of the workforce: 50% of employees in Germany read professional e-mails during their free time, and 44% even reply to them.

Numerous device-independent online services equally enable private matters to be dealt with during work between meetings. The possibilities of Work 4.0 offer many opportunities for organizations and employees, but also bring risks.

Work 4.0 and New Work call for a more flexible approach to working time models and yet do not relieve employers of their responsibility to fulfill existing duties of care. Work-life blending must be managed so that it can develop its full benefits for both sides.

Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility, CSR for short, is the social responsibility of companies in the sense of sustainable business. Today, it is important for employees that their employers assume joint responsibility for overcoming current ecological and socio-economic challenges.

The careful use of resources and the protection of the environment bind employees just as much as regional social commitment with regard to social, cultural, and ecological concerns. Transparency towards stakeholders with regard to the fair and legally compliant design of value creation processes and their global interconnectedness are also becoming more important.