OREANDA-NEWS. December 22, 2015. Christian P. Illek, Chief Human Resources Officer at Deutsche Telekom AG, warns of the dangers of “digital marginalization” for our future and our prosperity.

Dark clouds have appeared on the horizon that threaten Germany’s future. In terms of its digital performance, Germany ranks tenth among the 28 countries of the European Union – only a middling score. That is alarming, and an indicator of one of our country’s key problems: we are running the risk of failing as a knowledge society, and thus jeopardizing our future and our prosperity. Digital marginalization is poison for society and the economy.

There is a need to act. We have to create the requisite infrastructure for digitalization and also empower people to play an active role in the digitalization process. People should not only take part in digitalization, but also be able to contribute something to the related value-creation processes.

Digital skills are becoming a key qualification in the working world and even a prerequisite for participating in social life. Without a concerted effort in this area, the ranks of digital outsiders will swell, ultimately leading to serious economic upheaval. To prevent that from happening, we need a broad-scale education initiative that, above all else, meshes the curricula of educational institutions more closely with the needs of the business world. What our schools and universities teach is no longer in tune with the times, nor the market. In Germany, many curricula are outdated and in urgent need of reform, and policymakers must give such reform top priority. One step in the right direction, for example, would be to make IT a mandatory subject in our schools. But politicians must also be willing to provide appropriate funding for educational institutions and to invest in teacher training. This is just one of many examples.

One thing is clear: the digital future is not to be had for nothing. To be honest, digitalization will also destroy jobs. Most at risk are people with low levels of education and activities that can be easily replaced by machinery or technology. Of course, new types of work will arise. But if we do not enable people to enter the digital era, a substantial gap will open up – with correspondingly negative repercussions for the state and society.

Looking ahead, we can see that digitalization offers enormous prospects for making the working world a more human place. I’m not talking about the fact that mindless activities will disappear – skeptics like to cite this transformation as an indicator of how digitalization is dehumanizing the working world, even though tasks that are monotonous and pose no challenge are not really work that is worthy of human beings.

No, I am talking about the improvement in working conditions and in the quality of work. We have an opportunity to work more flexibly and independently of a fixed location; we can (and must) work more collaboratively than before; and we can contribute our individual capabilities much better when working in cross-departmental teams. We will also have to do more in the way of sharing knowledge, thus making corporate processes more democratic. That will put our companies in a better position to weather crises. Command-&-control cultures no longer function. But, thanks to the new forms of collaboration I have described, we will be able to discern much sooner, and rectify, the adverse developments that can suddenly balloon into threatening scandals.

We cannot leave the job of realignment to a select few.