Cultural Transformation of Industries Through Creation of New Collaboration Concepts Driven by Employee Engagement

This article illustrates the transformation of a traditional car manufacturer (Volkswagen) into an IT driven company. In order to succeed in this change process, a substantial transformation of workforce and workspace is necessary. Compared to manufacturing workforces, IT workers require a very different culture when it comes to operations, internal mindset, and office design. It causes a radical change from single desks and offices to open, inclusive, collaborative, multifunctional, and intuitive workspaces. Furthermore, considering the company's rapid growth over the last two years to its current scale of 5000+ employees, its achievements are remarkable. They represent a major break from habits, cultural norms, and working methods. In addition to Volkswagen, this applies to the entire automotive industry as a whole in this article, a review process with employee involvement is discussed, as well as the guidelines for successfully introducing the new work and collaboration model called _spheres®. All phases of concept development should be conducted with a high degree of employee involvement and transparency.