Ethereum as a Christmas Present — The Easy Way to Familiarize Your Employees With Blockchain Technology
Blockchain technology and distributed ledgers will change the way companies do business. Although technological transformation is inevitable to stay competitive, many managers and employees are resistant towards new technologies. The first step to breaking this barrier is to decrease the knowledge gap. To succeed, it is critical to create the right incentives. In time for the pre-Christmas season, a simple and efficient example would be a Christmas present wrapped around an incentive such as: “If you tell me your Ethereum address, we will transfer to you the equivalent of 50 Euro.” This way, the employees are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the technology which in turn helps them to understand the potentials of the technology rather than feeling threatened by it. — Authors: Karsten Treiber, Philipp Sandner, Mathias Scherf, Thomas Faber
How can employees be educated in the area of blockchain? Of course, seminars can be organized, reading material can be provided, etc. However, in this article we will outline another approach: Learning by doing. We propose that a simple challenge for employees can be a highly efficient method to educate people. How would this exactly work? It is straightforward. A company should provide a little budget and tell its employees: “If you tell me your Ethereum address, we will transfer to you the equivalent of 50 Euro.” Full stop. Now it would be the task for employees, to do own research to understand what an Ethereum address is. Once they find out and tell it to their company, they (1) have understood large parts of the technology and (2) get an incentive transferred to them. Like a Christmas present.
But before we go into detail, let’s start step by step.
For everybody in finance — working at banks, exchanges, services providers, or in finance departments of industrial companies — it will be of utmost importance to understand blockchain technology. Blockchain technology and distributed ledgers will change the way finance works in the upcoming 5 to 15 years. It is possible, that within this timeframe a significant share of financial transactions run on blockchain-like systems. This could be currencies such as the Euro, the US dollar or the Swiss franc. Financial intermediaries will have to adapt their business models. Most of them will not be replaced by blockchain technology, because banks for example might act as a gateway towards the ledger and do custody of digital assets. Further, traditional exchanges will engage in trading these assets — with blockchain technology underlying.
Technological progress and the process of digitization is changing our lives and is constantly transforming the way we work.
Especially managers or employees, who were working in business areas or companies with a successful and profitable business model for the past years, sometimes see this transformation as a threat. However, technological innovation is natural and necessary for every company to grow and evolve.
Blockchain will change the way we work
One of the most discussed topics in recent months has been the distributed ledger technology, better known as the blockchain. Many business areas are evaluating, how blockchain solutions can improve their processes, or if the new technology will make their business models obsolete. But how to examine, if the blockchain technology could also improve the way your colleagues work together or enhance the way you run your business?
In autumn 2017, the authors sat together and explored the possibilities to change that. And so they figured out this easy way to solve that.
The first step when managing resistance to accept new technologies is to close the knowledge gap in the workforce. This principle sounds pretty obvious and simple. Nevertheless, as soon as one tries to apply this principle to the field of blockchain it gets disproportionally complicated, because only a minority fully understands the concept of blocks, nodes, chains, and coins.
How to motivate your workforce to adopt new technologies
There is no need that the whole workforce of a company fully understands the functionalities of the blockchain, as long as the employees are open-minded towards new technologies. This is what happened in a consulting company in Baden-Wuerttemberg (Germany) last year for Christmas.
The medium-sized enterprise, targens GmbH, decided to give every employee 0.25 ether (ETH) as a Christmas present, as long as they were able to create their own wallet until Christmas Eve. What happened after this promise was published on the Christmas party — and it was astonishing. For the last few weeks in December, everybody was talking about blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum and distributed ledger technology during the coffee break. Employees investigated different wallets and crypto exchanges. Some even got deeper and found out about mixing services. They also addressed the question where the private key is actually held: on a laptop, a smartphone, on a printed sheet of paper — or held by an intermediary company doing custody for him or her.
Although the value of the Christmas present has depreciated for the last twelve months, this example could be seen as a wonderful success story. Nowadays, the targens GmbH is operating as a reputable blockchain developing and consulting company in Germany and is working together with financial institutions and industrial companies. Together with these partners, the company is realizing new business models and trying to improve the way, people work together.
So if you are still looking for an innovative and uncommon Christmas present for your colleagues, why not try some crypto coins? But as noted above, it is key to wrap this present around the right incentive. For example: “If you tell me your Ethereum address, we will transfer to you the equivalent of 50 Euro.” Nobody has to dig into blockchain technology and Ethereum. But those that do, will be rewarded with a small present. Even more so, if an employee is able to present an Ethereum address, he has previously generated such an address. It is very likely, that he investigated the block explorer, various wallets and — on the go — educated himself or herself on this topic. Actually, this approach also shows how open-minded people are.
Further resources
It is important to “read” about how education in blockchain and DLT can work. At the end of the day, there is just one important thing: Just do it. Don’t just think, but rather act.
Feel free to also check out our comprehensive education guide on how to acquire the necessary knowledge in only 10 working days.
If you enjoy video courses, don’t miss the recently launched Frankfurt School Blockchain Academy and benefit from top-class modular online courses.
Merry Christmas.
Remarks
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Do you want to learn more about how blockchain will change our world?
- Blockchain knowledge: We wrote a Medium article on how to acquire the necessary blockchain knowledge within a workload of 10 working days.
- Our two blockchain books: We have edited two books on how blockchain will change our society (Amazon link) in general and the everything related to finance (Amazon link) in particular. Both books are available in print and for Kindle — currently in German and soon in English. The authors have been more than 20 well-known blockchain experts in startups, corporations and the government from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein — all contributing their expertise to these two books.
Authors
Karsten Treiber is blockchain expert at targens GmbH. You can contact him via email, via LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter (@katreiber).
Prof. Dr. Philipp Sandner has founded the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center (FSBC). From 2018 to 2021, he was ranked among the “top 30” economists by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), a major newspaper in Germany. He has been a member of the FinTech Council and the Digital Finance Forum of the Federal Ministry of Finance in Germany. He is also on the Board of Directors of FiveT Fintech Fund, 21e6 Capital and Blockchain Founders Group — companies active in venture capital financing for blockchain startups and crypto asset investment management. The expertise of Prof. Sandner includes crypto assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, decentralized finance (DeFi), the digital euro, tokenization of assets, and digital identity. You can contact him via mail (m@philippsandner.de) via LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter (@philippsandner).
Mathias Scherf is blockchain consultant at targens GmbH. You can contact him via email.
Thomas Faber is a research fellow at the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center. You can contact him via email or LinkedIn.
