What did we learn in 2024?

By Janus Boye

It’s hard to predict the future, but as the saying goes, the best way to predict the future is to study the past.

Thanks to Haiilo for hosting our end-of-year 2024 meeting in their charming Hamburg offices

At this year’s annual end-of-year collab meeting in Hamburg, we took a closer look at what we have learned in 2024 by bringing together our local groups with an open invite to other community members, a few selected speakers and created a curated packed afternoon with a dozen lightning talks.

Attending this year was a bigger crowd than past years — a diverse set of digital leaders from large, complex and global organisations like Canyon, Jungheinrich, Lufthansa, OTTO alongside agencies such as Diconium and Thoughtworks as well as software firms like CoreMedia, Magnolia, Staffbase and a few other friends from near and far.

Employee communication platform software firm Haiilo hosted us in their charming offices, which was a fitting scene for learning and networking.

Below I’ve shared a shortened of each talk with my key take aways. We opened by hearing from our host, both on their take on the employee experience as well as a refreshing alternative to the usual Kanban or Scrum way of working.

Recent employee experience challenges

Besides a quick company presentation, Product Marketing Team Lead Jan-Eike Rosenthal at Haiilo, shared insights into the connection between engaged employees and successful companies. Or, as he said, it’s not simply enough to reach the employees with your new and stories, you also need to engage them. That’s the harder part.

So why is this important? Jan-Eike shared recent research that shows that 19% of German employees are not engaged with their company. That’s some 7 million employees in Germany, which don’t do much more than they are strictly required to. Another eye opening number from the same research was that 45% of German employees are either actively looking for a new job or open to new challenges. That’s a high number in my book, but as Jan-Eike said, the problem here is actually not a new one. It was bad during the pandemic and it was also bad before. Disengaged employees remain a persistent issue – for decades.

Another well-known challenge is the problem of not having enough time for internal communication. Internal comms teams still face time crunches and the need for strategic solutions persists. Lack of budget is also familiar as well as the lack of analytics — or not knowing which campaign or initiative really made the difference.

As one of his 2024 lessons learned, Jan-Eike highlighted that too many tools create confusion, not clarity. A well-known challenge from start-ups that has now also creeped into large corporations. Finally, he also mentioned the realisation that “one size fits all” is dead: Personalisation is the key to tackling information overload.

From Kanban/Scrum to Shape Up

Giving us a glimpse behind the scenes of how they work at Haiilo, VP Product Sven Hoffmann, shared how they have started working with the Shape up agile framework.

Shape up was originally developed by 37Signals (Basecamp) and in Shape Up the teams operate on fixed timelines, called cycles, typically 6 weeks long. Between each 6 week cycle there is a 2 week “cool-down period” where teams can work on tasks that are not directly related to cycles. For example: technical debt or exploration of new ideas.

MORE TO COME

Learning together towards 2025

I certainly learned something new from the many talks, and also enjoyed catching up with members. To the participants some talks might have been more relevant than others, but the magic wouldn't be there, if everything was what you thought you needed right now. Who knows what 2025 will bring?

Thanks to Haiilo for hosting us and making it possible to bring our community together and prepare for next year in a friendly and down-to-earth setting. If you want to look a slight bit more back, why not browse from the end-of-year 2023 session, which I covered in this post: What might 2024 bring?

Once we’ve landed in 2025, we have a full learning program in Q1. There’s CMS Kickoff 25 in January in Florida, where we have a few European participants, including from CoreMedia, Kentico, Kontent.ai, TYPO3 and Umbraco. There’s also local meetings in all our peer groups.

Hope to see you there!

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Most organisations are undergoing radicalchanges on many fronts. Rapid evolution onthe digital and technological fronts andchanging demographics within theworkforce are challenging conventionsacross sectors and industries. Thecombination of a new generation enteringthe workplace with fresh skills, approachesand expectations and experienced seniorsstaying on for longer means that we need tofundamentally rethink the workplace – and how we design the employee experience to make the best of this new reality.

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We’ll be watching these bright individuals

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