Dr. Norbert Himmler, Director of ZDF, was a guest speaker at the HR Campus Talk at Mainz University of Applied Sciences on April 22, 2024. Under the title "One ZDF for all – a change process and its effects on the organization and programming", Dr. Himmler gave his lecture to an audience of students, university staff, and collaborating companies in the university auditorium.
ZDF, a major media company in Mainz, is facing the challenge of demographic change and a shortage of skilled workers, as over 1,000 of its employees will be retiring in the next seven years. In this context, strategic personnel planning is an important task for the future.
Dr. Himmler presented six goals that the company is pursuing to reinforce its future viability and appeal to younger generations. These include promoting social acceptance through greater diversity in its programming and transparent communication, as well as a clear competitive positioning.
Furthermore, the company is striving to achieve a forward-looking distribution strategy where the programming is distributed on various platforms, including the ZDF neo channel. Partnerships with media production companies in the region and international collaborations are to be strengthened, for example by expanding the production of series. At the same time, ZDF wants to further expand its position as an attractive employer and successfully lead its employees into the future as part of a modern media company.
The Director emphasized the importance of these goals for ZDF’s programming. Although ZDF is currently strong in the segment of documentaries and features, he identified the need to adapt the programming to appeal to younger target groups. One of the challenges here is to increase awareness of ZDF and its media library when it comes to series so that it can focus more closely on digital platforms.
The event offered participants exciting insights into the challenges and strategies of the media company and showed how ZDF is positioning itself in a changing media environment. Afterwards, Dr. Himmler answered numerous questions from the audience.
