“You’re the owner of your destiny.”

Elke, you have been the Head of Corporate Development at Bühler for over a year now. What were your first impressions when you assumed the job?

I thought the welcome was overwhelmingly nice. The people were amazing and went out of their way to support me and teach me about the organization and its history. I also think I had a fantastically structured onboarding. I feel very lucky because when I joined in September, most of the world was in a lockdown and we, at Bühler, weren’t. And while I couldn’t, unfortunately, travel to meet a lot of colleagues, at least in Uzwil I had the opportunity to meet colleagues in person. And that makes a big difference. Looking back, I feel very privileged that I had that opportunity. 

I was also very impressed with the fantastic atmosphere we have and how proud people are to be part of Bühler. That is a fantastic boost when you are new. I was and still am impressed by the great offices we have. And the wonderful coffee that is served in the CUBIC. 

What has been the biggest project so far, one that you’ll remember forever? 

If you look at our people strategy – which is anchored in our business strategy – what we do in HRD in terms of enabling leaders to be the best leaders, in terms of helping employees to be their best selves at work and be engaged. I couldn’t pick one because I think it’s all of them coming together.

The most fantastic thing for me at Bühler is not only the HR support but also seeing leaders and managers investing time to develop their people, which makes the difference. Having a solid strategy and some great programs to offer is important and also the easy part. What really matters for impact is the conversations that happen behind them. It’s the genuine willingness, but also time investment of leadership and managers to enable their people to grow and their concern for their wellbeing. To me, that’s probably the most rewarding thing to see; they demonstrate that at Bühler people development is truly in the DNA of the company and that is what I will remember forever because I am reminded of it every day. 

What are your goals in the job for the next year, and for the next 5 years?

You mentioned that a key element of the HRD25 strategy is to make sure that employees are at their best self. How do you do that? 

On an individual level, it all starts with the mindset and with self-awareness. In the words of Henry Ford ‘whether you think you can or you think you can’t you’re right’. To support people in this process we offer ‘Beyond Bias’ workshops; they are facilitated by Bühler colleagues, and everyone can sign up; they play a key part in terms of creating that awareness that we all have biases, how we can work with them to create a fun, inclusive work environment for all of us. I think that’s a key first step in learning who you are and how to be your best self. 

We also support our leaders in all stages of the employee lifecycle to help them have effective conversations with their team. How do I have a career conversation? How do I have performance conversations? How do I give and receive feedback? How do I create a high-performance team? That’s from the leader, the people manager’s part. 

And from an organizational perspective, we have defined our compass on how we want to interact with each other, our TOP Values. It is on all of us to foster a culture of Trust, Ownership and Passion and create the organization that we want to work for. In this context I would like to mention our employee driven Generation B movement. What I really appreciate is that it creates a culture of engagement and initiative. What this really says is if you want to have the organization you want to work for, then it is up to you to bring in new initiatives and help shape this organization.

From the point of view of supervisors and managers, what is their role for career development, for personal development, to make sure the people perform at their best?

They play a very critical role. Each one of us is in charge of our own career, and if we want to, we control our own destiny. The organization is the framework of opportunities and HR supports in providing trainings and tools to develop but managers play a very critical role because their role is to help translate all these inputs for the team and the individual employee, they translate the strategy and values into tasks and a working culture and thus help individuals navigate the organization and their career. They are the ‘go to person’ for the individual employee and really are the gateway to helping them grow and develop. 

You said that we can control our own destiny. In that sense, what roles do employees play in their career development and in their own development?

What advice would you give someone who’s been in a company, for example, for 30 years, they’ve done all the learnings, all the trainings, and they just feel that there’s nowhere to grow. How would you motivate this person to develop? 

First of all, I would like to say ‘Thank you’ – thank you for your contribution to the organization to date.

Secondly, I would say it all comes back to the question ‘do you know what you want to do next and how can we at Bühler support?’ As a global player, it is important for us to harness the diversity of our workforce and as such enabling employees of all generations to thrive and develop is a critical success factor to innovate for a better world. We really want to make sure that we engage all generations across the group and ensure that no matter where you are in your career, we can best support you. In essence for the individual, it comes back to the question ‘what would I like to do?’. It’s knowing what it is that you want and then seeing how you can achieve it. 

We are committed to help employees identify how we can support in terms of employee agility, all our employees at every stage in their career. I would say that as you progress in your career this becomes even more personal and over time also transitions to questions such as ‘how can I give back’, ‘how can I transfer my knowledge, how can I educate younger generations and mentor them’ while developing myself. As much as we need new and younger generations of talent, we equally need our long serving colleagues and experts who have made and continue to make their contributions – we rely on all our diverse employees working effectively together to ensure we continue to play to win. 

What effect did the pandemic have on personal development overall in the company? 

I think it has accelerated virtual learning, particularly also with the increase in mobile working practices. In this lies great opportunity, for example by delivering trainings to many people globally at the same time which exponentially increases opportunity for cross-border exchange. It also allowed for employees to access recorded trainings on demand at a time most convenient for them. What we have also learned is that we cannot just take face to face content and put it online, it is a whole different playground in terms of designing and delivering engaging trainings in a virtual / hybrid format. 

At the same time, we have also learned that transitioning fully to virtual is not the solution either. Human connection, networking and collaboration cannot be replaced by technology and certain training elements will continue to need to happen face-to-face for it to be effective.

We are continuously learning what works and what doesn’t work, we are experimenting together, learning, failing fast. It is important to not just bounce back to what we did before, then I would say this was a wasted 18 months. It is about taking the learnings and looking at how we can deliver even more effective development opportunities for our employees in the future and that is what we are doing together with our Local Learning Centers, Business Academies and the global learning community. 

What makes a great leader?

That is definitely not a simple question to answer. Each year thousands of leadership books are written on this subject alone. At the same time, I would say that there are behavior patterns and attitudes that are foundational for an individual to develop into a leader. It all starts with the mindset, the ability for self-reflection and the humility to know that you don’t know it all, but you are willing to learn it all. For me, I think what makes a great leader is humble and has the humanity to learn and continue to learn and be able to admit mistakes. I think a great leader is also someone who really listens and who listens with the intent to understand. It’s someone who has a high level of curiosity and who dares to care about their people. Someone who can give feedback and most importantly be able to take feedback and make changes in behavior based on it. What makes a great leader at Bühler is defined in our values and the associated behaviors.  In summary I would say it’s someone who lives and embodies our TOP values.

Are there any international trends in personal development that you can share with us? 

The role of the manager will become even more important in terms of engaging and motivating dispersed, hybrid teams. It is critical to support managers in this task while also ensuring they look after their personal wellbeing and don’t burn out in the process. 

In the fast-paced world, it will be important to reskill quickly; this means organizations need to be ready to continuously train their employees to stay relevant and employees need to remain open to regularly re-skill. 

I also see a trend for learning and development to be more and more personalized and on demand. This trend has been accelerated by the pandemic and I believe it is here to stay. Employees want to access learning nuggets at their own time and pace.  

Finally, there is a clear trend that people are looking more and more for purpose in their work-life and want to work for an organization whose purpose aligns with their personal values. It will therefore become increasingly important for companies to define and be able to articulate their wider contribution to society and the planet.  

I think we are fantastically positioned at Bühler with our clearly defined purpose and the clarity about the contribution we want to make to by driving the triple bottom line of humanity, sustainability, and economy.