How Allianz Is Building a Workforce Ready for Constant Change

What advice would you give to maybe chief people officers listening or aspiring chief people officers listening who've maybe grown up in HR on, on how best to partner with their, their CIO counterpart?

I mean, that, that's obviously dependent on backgrounds, uh, very much.

But I b- I, I believe you need to have a good feel for if the business respects you as the transformation partner and not just as they throw things at you to do, right? So, and, and this is for me, for instance, I have, um, regular sessions with all of our 60 CEOs.

So my partners are actually the CEOs because I believe you, HR cannot do something which is not owned and lived and breathed and authentically driven by the top of the house, right? So I, I truly believe that if this is the partnership, everything in the back can be supported by the people function, obviously.

But you need to be respected as the one who also nudges, who also challenges, who also sets the bar high for how we wanna attract talents, how we wanna develop our people.

So I think this role has been working very nicely for me because all my CEO colleagues, they know me from the past, from different roles of being driving transformation.

So clearly for me, this seat at the table is exactly what I need to feel.

If I wouldn't have that feeling, you, you end up of being, you know, someone who takes commands to do things.

But I, I believe the people officer need to shape it.

He needs, he or she needs to be this challenging body also to see, like, are we really taking the right effort to take our people on the journey going forward? And if you ask me today, this is even more important because the speed of change is so rapidly that it's not falling into natural cycles we had in the past decades.

You need to adapt basically weekly, monthly.

You need to always be able to challenge yourself.

Is my st- s- uh, thinking still adequate, or am I actually maybe becoming complacent? Or I think we're doing good, but actually, you know, the pace of the market is going so fast.

So I believe my advice would only be have a healthy view on do you have a seat at the table, and are you respected for your challenging power and your delivery power, or are you more the recipient of taking things and you just need to do it? I feel the latter one is very dangerous.

And just to sort of, again, thinking about your background coming in from, from other parts of the business, um, Bettina, you know, has it changed how the rest of the organization see HR?

I'd say so.

I say so because I think I annoyed many people in the beginning that every second question was like, "But why, why are we doing this? Why is this serving the business? Are we making the customer more happy?" So I think I an- annoyed many people by constantly asking that.

Now that they got used to me in this thing, I think it has actually s- uh, given them an elevation because they're seen as this partner and not as the one who is just taking, um, topics to solve in the back, right? So that's why I believe this, this, this very diligent, maybe even provoking, constant challenging as, uh, am I delivering a value for a customer or for our company, that is a, I think, a very healthy one.

And, um, it, uh, it changed certainly the s- the perception on the people function, I'd say.

So through the work we, we do here at Insight222 and the conversations that I've had on the podcast over the last, over seven years now, I'm, I'm always curious to hear how each organization is a- is approaching workforce transformation.

You talked about how you partner with the CEOs in the...

There's over 50 CEOs I think that you've got across the Allianz group.

So obviously, given that scale, you know, 156,000 employees, 50 C- CEOs, how are you thinking about keeping people, uh, your employees on the journey with you?

We have been starting as a company fairly early, like eight years back already, to put strategic workforce planning as a key component where we look at the demand side of what do we need, which skills do we need, and equally match it obviously with the supply side, like in the sense of who's retiring, what's natural f- fluctuation, all these aspects.

So we've started that journey fairly early.

What advice would you give to maybe chief people officers listening or aspiring chief people officers listening who've maybe grown up in HR on, on how best to partner with their, their CIO counterpart?

I mean, that, that's obviously dependent on backgrounds, uh, very much.

But I b- I, I believe you need to have a good feel for if the business respects you as the transformation partner and not just as they throw things at you to do, right? So, and, and this is for me, for instance, I have, um, regular sessions with all of our 60 CEOs.

So my partners are actually the CEOs because I believe you, HR cannot do something which is not owned and lived and breathed and authentically driven by the top of the house, right? So I, I truly believe that if this is the partnership, everything in the back can be supported by the people function, obviously.

But you need to be respected as the one who also nudges, who also challenges, who also sets the bar high for how we wanna attract talents, how we wanna develop our people.

So I think this role has been working very nicely for me because all my CEO colleagues, they know me from the past, from different roles of being driving transformation.

So clearly for me, this seat at the table is exactly what I need to feel.

If I wouldn't have that feeling, you, you end up of being, you know, someone who takes commands to do things.

But I, I believe the people officer need to shape it.

He needs, he or she needs to be this challenging body also to see, like, are we really taking the right effort to take our people on the journey going forward? And if you ask me today, this is even more important because the speed of change is so rapidly that it's not falling into natural cycles we had in the past decades.

You need to adapt basically weekly, monthly.

You need to always be able to challenge yourself.

Is my st- s- uh, thinking still adequate, or am I actually maybe becoming complacent? Or I think we're doing good, but actually, you know, the pace of the market is going so fast.

So I believe my advice would only be have a healthy view on do you have a seat at the table, and are you respected for your challenging power and your delivery power, or are you more the recipient of taking things and you just need to do it? I feel the latter one is very dangerous.

And just to sort of, again, thinking about your background coming in from, from other parts of the business, um, Bettina, you know, has it changed how the rest of the organization see HR?

I'd say so.

I say so because I think I annoyed many people in the beginning that every second question was like, "But why, why are we doing this? Why is this serving the business? Are we making the customer more happy?" So I think I an- annoyed many people by constantly asking that.

Now that they got used to me in this thing, I think it has actually s- uh, given them an elevation because they're seen as this partner and not as the one who is just taking, um, topics to solve in the back, right? So that's why I believe this, this, this very diligent, maybe even provoking, constant challenging as, uh, am I delivering a value for a customer or for our company, that is a, I think, a very healthy one.

And, um, it, uh, it changed certainly the s- the perception on the people function, I'd say.

So through the work we, we do here at Insight222 and the conversations that I've had on the podcast over the last, over seven years now, I'm, I'm always curious to hear how each organization is a- is approaching workforce transformation.

You talked about how you partner with the CEOs in the...

There's over 50 CEOs I think that you've got across the Allianz group.

So obviously, given that scale, you know, 156,000 employees, 50 C- CEOs, how are you thinking about keeping people, uh, your employees on the journey with you?

We have been starting as a company fairly early, like eight years back already, to put strategic workforce planning as a key component where we look at the demand side of what do we need, which skills do we need, and equally match it obviously with the supply side, like in the sense of who's retiring, what's natural f- fluctuation, all these aspects.

So we've started that journey fairly early.