HSG Focus in the world of work

23 February 2018. "I am in good health and able to work. What else could I want?" wrote Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in a letter to Carl Friedrich Zelter in 1813. Work – pleasure or pain? Sometimes one, sometimes the other. In the garden, on a building site, in the laundry room, in the office, soon during spring cleaning – in whatever form, work accompanies us almost throughout life. In our dossier on work, we are primarily looking at gainful employment from a few perspectives, i.e. that work for which we are paid money at the end of the month.

Flexible, but not arbitrary
We spoke to the historian Caspar Hirschi about how digitisation impacts on our world of work and why we should not be afraid of changes. In an interview, labour law expert Thomas Geiser warns that flexibility in terms of time and space – which we increasingly enjoy today to do our work – must not lead to arbitrariness on the part of employers. Our leadership expert Heike Bruch explains in a video interview how motivation can turn into exhaustion, and why and how not only people but also companies should take preventive measures against this. These issues and others are elucidated in our twelve-part dossier on work.

A new design for the web app
With this issue, our University magazine HSG Focus is celebrating its fifth anniversary. In time for this fifth birthday, we have revamped the design of the original app for tablets and smartphones slightly and that of the web app extensively – in order to make the magazine a little more user-friendly. And talking about user-friendliness: HSG Focus now enjoys more than 10,000 unique users per issue, who account for a total of about 50,000 page impressions. And remember: in our competition under the "Campus" heading, you can win 3x2 vouchers for a culinary paper chase. Good luck!