Haniel Lecture 09 2010 E.pdf - Haniel Stiftung

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Welcoming address
Franz M. Haniel
Dear Ronald Heifetz, Mr Merz, ladies and gentlemen,
In view of tonight’s topic, I should say that I am pleased that your worklife
balance has allowed you to be here with us this evening. Those of
you who have attended a Haniel Lecture before will be familiar with
our aims. The Haniel Lectures address issues and challenges brought
about by social change and try to fi nd answers by approaching these
issues from an entrepreneurial and political perspective, as well as
from the European and North American perspective.
The title of this year’s Haniel Lecture is “Live to work or work to live?”.
The American poet Robert Frost once said, “By working faithfully
eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work
twelve hours a day”. I would like to stress right from the outset that
work and life should not be seen as two separate and irreconcilable
worlds. Work is not the mandatory part of our existence and it is
equally true that real life does not only take place outside of the
workplace. It is up to you to decide for yourselves whether tonight
for example is work, life or hopefully a bit of both for you.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is the general consensus that, for some
time now, the world of work has been caught in the midst of a fundamental
process of change. The status quo of modern working
society is characterised by many diff erent confl icts. Firstly, employment
biographies have changed. Life-long service in one company is
being replaced by multiple changes of employer, industry and place
of work over the course of a person’s career. No form of education
can guarantee life-long employment. Permanent jobs are giving way
to temporary forms of employment. This development has been
accompanied by life-long learning, the constant need to change our
plans, the fear of not making progress in our jobs due to the brevity
of the deployment period and the dissolution of borders between
work and family life. In the future, no company will be able to aff ord
to ignore the potential confl ict between work and family life.
Secondly, work-life balance is so much more than just a modern
term for equal opportunities for men and women in the workplace.
There is more to it that laundry services and wellbeing. It is about
a changing system of values that increasingly places emphasis on
factors such as happiness and fulfi lment. It is about a fun da mental
change in perspective, namely the recognition that employees’
private lives should be taken into consideration to a greater extent
in the interest of the company. And this should benefi t women
primarily to make it easier for them to assume executive positions.
Thirdly, the fi nancial and economic crisis that is now behind us has
stepped up competition and hence put even more pressure on the
ability of companies and leaders to change and adapt; and this
trend is here to stay. We live in times of non-linear developments.
Methods that used to be successful in the past may no longer be
successful in the future. And this means that the pressure on individuals
is greater than ever before.
In his book, On the Shortness of Life, the Roman philosopher and
politician Seneca says, “There is nothing the busy man is less busied
with than living; there is nothing harder to learn”. The healthy
identity of a person is based on achieving a certain harmony
between work, relationship and family, body and health, social
relationships, societal involvement and systems of meaning. Not
all of these elements must be of equal importance in all stages of
life, but over time a harmonious balance should be found between
them. Companies need to support their employees not only to
achieve good results in their jobs but also in their private lives.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you follow these lines of thought then
you will see that they throw up a number of new challenges, not
only for the individual but also for companies and company management,
socio-political conditions and thereby policymakers.