Human resources management: Professor Dr. Appel, you are a scientist, but you also worked for the company for many years and set up an HR Shared Service Center at BASF. In your opinion, what are the key changes of recent times?
Dr. Wolfgang Appel: In the past, it has to be said frankly, HR shared service centers were essentially call centers. It was all about interaction and efficient processing. Telephone communication has steadily declined in recent years, in favor of a shift to written communication. Where people used to talk to each other on the phone, they now use email or the service center prefers a portal with a standardized input channel.
And the influence of artificial intelligence (AI)?
The use of AI is of course made much easier by this shift in communication, because this written data is easier to process. The whole thing gets a further boost from the fact that there are now AI-supported, language-independent tools that can be used internationally. This eliminates language barriers.
