Agile working: ERGO’s Digital Factory

Anyone thinking of a “factory” will probably have in mind a building with a smoking chimney. The term “digital factory” has quite different associations. With a smart factory of this kind, ERGO is paving the way for the agile working of the future.

In Düsseldorf-Pempelfort – a neighbourhood with a mix of work, culture and housing – the old and new worlds of work come together. First there is ERGO’s slim, high-rise tower, shooting into the sky like a silver arrow. For more than 20 years, staff have worked in traditional offices, checking customers’ claims and payments.

On the other side of the Rhine, representing a new era, is the Group’s smart factory – the digital factory. It’s not a factory in the conventional sense – there is no heavy machinery, soot or assembly lines. Instead, the staff deal with the challenges of digitalisation in a creative environment, always bearing in mind what is important for customers. In doing so, ERGO employees are adopting new ways of working.

Digitalisation is changing the workplace

In order to be able to better understand the idea of a digital factory, we should first remind ourselves of the impact of digitalisation on our working lives. Robots or artificial intelligence (AI) have already found their way into offices and will continue to change companies in the future. At ERGO, for example, a software robot types datasets into the computer, thus saving staff from this time-consuming and error-prone activity.

Smart AI systems in turn allocate incoming emails from customers directly to the right staff member. The message thus reaches the desired contact within a very short time, a reply to the customer is even quicker than was otherwise possible, and staff have more time for things that no robot can take on: face-to-face meetings and customer consultations.

With shorter waiting times, the taking over of monotonous activities and the capacity freed up as a result, the advantages of digitalisation are plain to see. Emerging fears are also understandable, however. “Many employees are unable to assess the scale of the use of robotics or AI systems in the future in relation to their jobs”, says Nicole Nebelung, who is pushing the process of digital transformation at ERGO and sees herself as a “mediator between the old and the new worlds of work”. “It’s therefore important to involve people in the process of digitalisation. In the digital factory, that’s possible.”

Agile working in an agile setting

ERGO’s digital factory presents itself as a large open space where you will search in vain for traditional offices. Rather, the modern furniture is proof that work is a process and changing constantly. Staff get together in small teams, and even if their daily work routine follows a fixed structure, there is still plenty of freedom and room for creativity. “This setting is also reflected in our furniture”, says Nicole Nebelung. There are colourful square stools that can be shifted around according to requirements and the size of the team and combined into ever-changing configurations.

Many standing desks instead of sitting desks invite you to work in a back-friendly position, and lounge chairs offer comfortable places to think or for a phase of regeneration. “Phone boxes” provide employees with an undisturbed retreat for phone calls. “And, quite important: the distances between colleagues are so short that it’s not worth writing an email – it’s much quicker and less complicated to meet in person.”

Nicole Nebelung has worked as ERGO’s Digital Transformation Manager since the end of 2018.

Experts refer to working in such an atmosphere as “agile working”. No generally accepted, binding definition of this term has been established yet, but the concept is that employees cooperate flexibly and cross-functionally across departments. Here, traditional hierarchies are abandoned in favour of team building. “Agile working is not a method though”, Nicole Nebelung stresses. “Agile refers rather to the staff’s attitude – their mindset. And that’s what’s crucial to the digital factory’s success.”

Satisfied customers, satisfied staff

Employees who are open to new experiences at work and would like to take part in the digital factory experimental arrangement are sent to the factory’s new world of work for four days a week. They will either have been recommended by their supervisor or will have become curious through one of the numerous events held by the Company to inform staff about the digital transformation.

In the factory, staff deal with claims just like they deal with contract-related matters – the focus is always on the customer. “For example, one team developed an app which we’ve now made available to our customers, a claim tracker”, reports Nicole Nebelung. “Using this, customers can check the status of their submitted claims and when they can expect a payment.” Staff at the digital factory used surveys, amongst other things, to learn that this information is relevant for most customers.

Sometimes they even carry out such surveys in the street. “Once, colleagues simply went outside with their dummy app on a tablet and asked passers-by: What do you think of this? What else could be improved? What do you think is missing? And as each team also includes colleagues from IT, the wishes and suggestions could be implemented in no time.” Everyone benefits from such a result: customers, through a service that’s precisely tailored to them, and staff, who learn how useful their agile method of working is.

Trying things out and playful working

The fact that some efforts will also lead to a dead end is part of the concept. Rapid failure is included in the plan. One advantage of agile working is that individual topics can also be ditched without jeopardising the entire project. The so-called “scrum method” makes this possible. The English term “scrum” comes from rugby and refers to the tight huddle that’s formed when rugby players gather around the ball. Applied to agile project management, this image means that a team has more success than a lone wolf, particularly when it comes to passing the ball – or the topic – back and forth.

Every day in ERGO’s smart factory accordingly starts with a “daily scrum meeting” in which participants give colleagues a brief update on the current status of their project. If anything is going wrong, this is often when it will become apparent. Or in one of the reviews that takes place every two weeks. “These meetings mean that we have short development cycles and can respond rapidly when something goes differently to what we expected”, says Nicole Nebelung. In the traditional world of work, she says, such processes work differently. “Here, projects often have clearly defined starting and end points, and when these are reached the conclusion can be that the results were not as useful as hoped. It’s then too late to try out changes, however.”

On the fifth day of the week, the agile wanderers between the old and the new worlds of work return to their usual work environment. They encounter colleagues, supervisors and more and more curious people who would like to hear about their experiences in the smart factory. The digital factory ambassadors thus inspire others to get actively involved in the transformation. Fortunately. For when it comes to digital transformation, it’s worth being right in the thick of it and not just on the sidelines. Simply agile. That way, the required cultural transformation will also succeed.

This article first appeared in German on the zeit.de website on 2 December 2019.