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“Middle management is no longer a personalised line of control between top management and employees, but a support function to the employees that takes the dialogue directly with top management themselves ”
That’s how it sounds from Lasse Kjær Hansen who has advised Danish and international companies in performance enhancing leadership for 15 years and who sees great opportunities in the use of new technologies to enhance employee satisfaction and engagement. Lasse Kjær Hansen has recently gathered four consultant companies under one collective “umbrella” called People 4.0 and together they work on developing solutions that matches the new leadership demand in business.
Traditional middle level management is a consequence of an analogue and the non-digitalised world where top management need a daily representative to lead, direct and control the employees. This form of middle management can no longer meet the demand that employees have anno 2017. Everyday new employees that are characterised with being technical comfortable, well-educated and clarified in regards to their goals and values step into our companies. These colleagues, young as well as adults are already effective in their work methods. They communicate quick and effectively and they want freedom to solve tasks individually. These types of employees need a new form of middle management and it is the top manager’s responsibility to give it to them if they want to keep the talented employees and secure the future of their organisation
The new type of employees have the following characteristics:
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A wish for autonomy in their work tasks
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A wish for real-time feedback
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A wish for meaningful relations
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Need for professional support and recognition
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Need for a clear goal in their function
People 4.0
Lasse Kjær Hansen has advised senior leaders in multiple Maersk companies, Estée Lauder, H+H and many others. He is an entrepreneur, founder and majority owner of four consultant companies that are now gathered under one common umbrella;” People 4.0”. This has been done to improve the advisory of clients within leadership of the new type of employees and to better offer concrete and (often) digital solutions that can help customers execute the new form of leadership in their organisation.
The four companies that are brought together in People 4.0 are Qeep Denmark (founded in 2002) who advises company leaders within performance leadership: Qeep Sales Excellence (founded in 2010) who advises companies in sales process optimisation: Orchard (founded in 2014) who designs digital solutions to drive behavioural change among employees on the background of anthropological studies: DataDrivenCulture (founded in 2015) who gathers, processes, analyses and presents employee data using artificial intelligence and other tools.
The Fourth industrial revolution sets the stage for companies
The need to view middle managers in a new way is closely correlated to the technological development that society and companies are facing. The new era has been named the fourth industrial revolution, where technologies like the internet, smartphones and artificial intelligence creates an infinite amount of possibilities to work in new and better ways, benefitting customers, employees and organisations as a whole. Automatization has made production quicker and less dependent on manpower, but as such, it hasn’t changed the approach to production and what is to be produced. With information technology, entire new methods are available for understanding and doing things where employees are not superseded, but work differently. We should embrace this and take advantage of it, because it will increase the employee satisfaction and create better results
Background
Lasse Kjær Hansen is Cand.Merc from Copenhagen Business School and has taken an Executive MBA program at Kellog Graduate School of Business. He has been employed as CEO, Marketing Director, Strategy Director, Sales and – Marketing Director in companies such as OAG, Celemi, Budget and Rent a Car. He has worked more than 11 years outside of Denmark in Chicago, London and Malmö and has throughout his career done projects and business in more than 30 countries. Lasse Kjær Hansen is an entrepreneur and started his first company in 1987 called Stud Hat, which conquered 30% of the Copenhagen market Copenhagen in just 2 years.
Privately, Lasse Kjær Hansen lives in Malmö with his wife Kristina Kjær Helgstrand who is a psychologist. They have two 19-year-old twin daughters and a 13-year-old son. In his spare time, Lasse is a passionate snowboarder, which he enjoys doing with his family, often off-piste if the conditions allow it. He loves nature and goes hunting, fishing and sailing as often as the calendar allows for it.
For further information:
Contact Lasse Kjær Hansen on his cell phone 24 88 11 20 or by
mail: Lasse.hansen@qeep.as
Visit https://www.engage.as
