Understanding the German mentality to data protection and data privacy is fundamental to doing successful business in the country
Nowhere in the world are there stricter requirements for data protection and privacy than in the European Union – and within the Union, no other country stands for data protection more than Germany. If you want your business to be successful in Germany, you should know the reasons. They have to do with the country’s history.
The jungle of corona measures meant that tours had to be canceled. Here federalism shows its deterrent face.
There was great hope that everything would change with the vaccinations against the corona virus, that cultural life could start again, that normality would return and that everyday corona life would become a case for the history books. But Germany is still a long way from that.
The theaters are playing again, the local cultural actors can also be seen again and get their performances, but the nationwide event business is not really getting off the ground. Just recently, Die Ärzte, Peter Maffay and Nena canceled their planned tours almost simultaneously: One of the reasons for this was the different corona rules in the federal states.
German authorities have too much access to people’s internet and mobile phone data and laws must be rewritten as they are unconstitutional, a court says.
The federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe has ruled that the privacy of Germans should be better protected.
Police investigating crimes or trying to prevent terror attacks are currently allowed to access names, addresses, birth dates and IP addresses. They are not entitled to access data involving connections to other people.
However, campaigners challenged the existing laws, and the judges agreed police should only be allowed such access if there was a specific danger or suspicion of a crime. Current laws violated the right of citizens to phone and internet privacy, they ruled.
Privacy is a significant concern for Germans for historical reasons, dating back to the all-pervasive Stasi intelligence service of the old East Germany and the vicious Gestapo of the Nazi era.
Information hoarding, whether intentional or not, can be a costly problem. In fact, International Data Corp estimates that Fortune 500 companies lose at least $31.5 billion a year by failing to share knowledge across teams and individuals. When employees don’t share their knowledge, teams miss opportunities to collaborate, individuals waste time trying to track down information, and organizations fail to preserve expertise and tacit knowledge when people leave the company.
Even though almost 75% of employers rate collaboration and teamwork as “very important,” according to data from Queens University of Charlotte, 39% of employees think that people in their organization don’t collaborate enough.
Improved communication between team members in the workplace often brings fantastic results, including:
• Smoother team building
• Greater agility
• Enhanced focus
• Efficient performance
• Reduced workload
In light of those benefits, it’s easy to agree that workplace collaboration is critical. But achieving these results can be difficult. Here are five tips to streamline communications in the digital age:
At the end of your day, do you close out dozens of browser tabs that you intended to look at but never got to?
Do you have piles of downloaded movies, TV shows, and music that you’ve never watched?
Have you ever discovered unread PDFs, e-books, and blog articles collecting virtual dust in secret corners of your computer?
Congratulations, you might be an Information Hoarder!
That means you collect information but don’t use it. Like the cat ladies on an episode of “Hoarders,” Information Hoarders have way more stuff than they know what to do with.
This very modern problem stems from the wealth of knowledge at our fingertips, our desire to consume it all, and our inability to do it.
I’ve observed a growing problem in today’s workplace where employees hide, hoard or simply don’t provide information to others in their organization. It’s disruptive and contributes substantially to the lack of productivity. Although employers have tried multiple solutions to the problem — meetings, team building, knowledge management systems — the issue remains largely unresolved.
Human beings are a complicated bunch, and, as it turns out, there are multiple reasons that can cause this breakdown in the flow of information from person to person, level to level or team to team. The fix depends largely on determining which specific issues are driving the behavior in each particular instance.
Knowledge hoarding is an indirect business killer, and there are often signs of knowledge hoarding in the workplace if you know what to look for. The good news is that once you recognize the signs, you can start addressing them.
We’re going to take a deeper dive into the definition of knowledge hoarding, why employees may keep knowledge to themselves, and what you can do to promote a culture of knowledge sharing within your organization.
Communication is key in all relationships, from personal to professional. However, sometimes even the strongest teams can suffer from poor communication.
This breakdown can be especially problematic when employees are scrambling to complete a major project or meet a tight deadline. To help you combat this issue, we asked 15 members of Forbes Coaches Council how leaders can improve team morale and get the lines of communication back on track.
The strength of cross-cultural teams is their diversity of experience, perspective, and insight. But to capture those riches, colleagues must commit to open communication; they must dare to share. Unfortunately, this is rarely easy. In the 25 years we’ve spent researching global work groups, we’ve found that challenges typically arise in three areas.