The young talents no longer flock to the job market desperately looking for a top address, they have to be courted so that they come at all. This is how HR managers and operational executives learn it in management seminars, combined with the somehow threatening-sounding hint that a career for decades with the same employer is so out. Today's twenty-year-olds change jobs an average of eight times in their professional lives in search of self-realization and ever new perspectives, so maybe not even old-fashioned stuff like job security, company pensions or company cars helps. This is likely to be an exciting race, because demographics are confronted with digitization that stops at nothing, not even nobody.
Niu, the Chinese manufacturer of electric scooters and mopeds, is testing what it feels like to get rid of the workplace altogether, possibly apart from the odd cleaner. In Stockholm, a showroom without staff is opened. To enter, visitors must identify themselves with their bank card. You will be greeted by an audio recording that also explains how the purchase works. By scanning a QR code on the products, customers are taken to Niu's website, where they are provided with information and can order the scooter. The shop is open daily from 8 a.m. to 20 p.m., and if someone in the shop gets up to mischief or faints in the face of what is on offer, a camera and sound system based on artificial intelligence sounds the alarm. Well, and now? Do you prefer old-fashioned stuff?