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When Ilka Horstmeier first joined BMW 28 years ago, the world was quite a different place. Bill Clinton was President of the USA, the Channel Tunnel had just opened and Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the first black President of South Africa. And, of course, the Series Three BMW 7 Series was introduced.
“I started with BMW a long time ago – 28 years to be exact – and a lot of change and transformation has happened in that time,” Horstmeier shares. “I spent 20 years in production, which, to be honest, is a people function. So it made sense for me to move to HR. That’s why I was so happy when I was approached three years ago to take up a seat on the Board for the HR function.”
It’s not every day that a business as large as BMW (which, according to 2019 figures published by the Group, employs circa 133,000 people worldwide) promotes from the factory floor, as it were, and it’s both a welcome move and a smart one.
I know everything about cars, about engineering, about purchasing. And I think that that is a good prerequisite for an HR professional.
“It’s a very good situation, I've been part of many transformations on the shop floor. So I know the people. I know what is relevant. If you want to take people with you on that [HR] journey, you have to know the business – and I do. I know everything about cars, about engineering, about purchasing. And I think that that is a good prerequisite for an HR professional. If you really want to impact on the business, you have to know a lot about it,” she explains.
BMW, HR and sustainability
One of the most interesting things that Horstmeier shared in the course of her interview was how BMW’s initiatives around sustainability and a purposeful intention to involve the workforce has not only brought some great ideas, but has also increased employee engagement and loyalty. With PwC revealing in a recent report that there is a current ‘green skills gap’ of about 200,000 employees – and with the latest figures on talent acquisition not showing a great improvement – it seems BMW is right on the money with its sustainability focus.
“Many of our employees, the current ones and also the future ones, are looking for purposeful tasks,” Horstmeier says. “And transforming mobility, including individual mobility, into a sustainable future, this is a task that many people really want to work on.
“For example, if [I] go to our IT people (people who could, of course, work for Google or any other competitor in the tech sector) and ask for their help [with these initiatives], they say that the complexity of the task is so important for them. And they really want to contribute to finding these complex solutions in areas like autonomous driving, and, of course, sustainability in the whole car. So I think that involving people in these tasks, involving them in solutions and listening to them, is really important for HR and the business.”
She continues: “I think in the future people will not only look at the leaders with regard to their ranks, but they look at leaders with regard to what they deliver to them, and how they help develop them as people. So I think strong HR leadership is a key to attract young talent in the future.”
Horstmeier’s beliefs aren’t just talk, either – the BMW Group (Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, to be precise) has decided as a strategic HR move to put its employees at the heart of its sustainability programme. The company does this by involving employees in sustainability efforts both as part of their actual job roles, but also, in ways they choose to be involved beyond that. In addition, the car company recently launched the Group’s largest ever training programme focussed on growing a sustainable workforce and increasing green skills and diversity.
“I think things like sustainability are something people are interested in,” Horstmeier explains. “And it goes far beyond their original jobs. Their job might be finding new materials which are more sustainable, or to work on electrical mobility (because it's not just about replacing combustion engines with electric engines). But beyond the ‘day job’, there's also the social dimension. Many of our employees, particularly the young people, also go out of their department on social aspects, and I think that's a perfect combination, and that is what motivates people – to have a job where they really can impact the company, society and the communities they are living in.”
Holistic HR
The other two passion projects for Horstmeier and the rest of the board is to increase the diversity of its workforce (something she refers to as ‘maximum diversity') as she believes this is the key to the company delivering diverse solutions to the environmental crisis.
Secondly, the Group is working to train their managers to approach problems with a mindset of what she calls “the future of interdisciplinary team work”.
“Going to school is not enough anymore,” she says. “You need to have lifelong learning, to incentivise learning and development, to really empower your people to learn and grow and to come up with good results.”
Two great project ‘results’ that Horstmeier is particularly proud of come from young BMW employees. Firstly, Anna Goldhofer came up with a design and production of a fully recyclable floor mat and seat covers for the Group’s Mini division.
That is what motivates people – to have a job where they really can impact the company, society and the communities they are living in.
Secondly Jacob Hamar and Sabrina Kolbeck started a programme called PowerUp - Empowering Social Mobility, which uses recycled electric vehicle batteries to power schools and social enterprises in developing countries. In an interview on BMW’s site, Kolbeck said: “Education is essential, and electricity can help here: the schools become independent of the often-monopolistic energy providers, they have fewer problems with power failures and can use regenerative energy, without diesel generators.” The pilot school for the programme is in South Africa and began using this energy a few months ago.
While HR is ever-busier with new roles to fill, new measures to implement and of course, making sure the people function is part of the senior leadership team, it’s important to stress just how vital programmes like BMW’s are in employee retention.
In a recent survey conducted by HR Grapevine of HR Directors, the majority (41%) of respondents said that, other than talent acquisition, the biggest barrier to HR success within their company is simply being too busy to implement new HR measures. But if those initiatives are important and will increase employee engagement, Horstmeier’s example is certainly one to follow.
