HR Report 2010/2011 - Deutsche Telekom AG

We draw on the best talent in all its diversity by offering attractive development opportunities and work environments as an employer.

Competitive workforceHR Big 4 and Group strategy Service culture Talent agenda HR@2012 34 Attractive worlds of work, attractive development paths. We want to fill the majority of our expert and management positions with top performers from within the company. The advantages of this are clear: These employees and executives know our strategy and targets and implement them, they are familiar with our processes. They have already demonstrated their loyalty and abilities. They have also underlined their willingness and motivation to develop, for instance by successfully taking part in relevant programs. In order to develop these future experts and executives, we first need to retain our talented employees and top performers within the Group, for example by offering them attractive working conditions and giving them responsible, exciting and challenging tasks. At the same time, we want to open up long- term prospects for their personal professional development. In order to fill vacancies seamlessly with suitable candidates, we need to be able to re- cruit future experts and executives transparently and throughout the world. Talent Spaces to raise the profile of talented people internationally and across segments. The Talent Spaces initiative is an excellent milestone for our international and cross-functional talent management. It allows us to overcome national boundaries in our company as well as previously iso- lated departmental “silos.” The kick-off event with the first 200 internatio- nal participants took place at the end of October 2010. True to our Guiding Principle “Best place to perform and grow,” the aim of the initiative is to net- work and raise the profile of participants within the company. They were proposed by superiors and senior management, are above-average perfor- mers and have demonstrated potential for greater challenges. The partici- pants from 22 countries all over the world now have time and opportunity to network with each other and resolve problems for up to 18 months. Further project assignments and individual activities such as mentoring and sha- dowing are planned. Talent Spaces was initially launched for employees in five functional areas: HR, Finance, Procurement, IT and Technology. Additional areas will follow in the next few years. Talent platforms in the Telekom Group. Our German and international companies support Talent Spaces with their own talent platforms. These platforms raise the profile of high potentials at company level, which then allows us to incorporate them in our Group-wide talent initiatives such as Talent Spaces. For example, Telekom Deutschland GmbH has had additio- nal talent platforms since 2010. They are aimed at high potentials who want to network across functions and engage in a company-wide dialog on stra- tegic and business-related issues. The aim is to raise the profile of talented people within the company. “Managing director’s talents,” “Cross mentor- ing” and “Delight your customer” – as well as “Dinner talks” at T-Systems – address target groups with different professional experience. In 2011, T-Systems will continue – in a new form – its Talent Acceleration Initiative (TAI) launched in 2009, in which eleven talented women with initial man- agement experience from Germany and other countries were prepared for taking over executive positions. T-Systems has also installed talent plat- forms at its national companies, e.g., the Talents@T-Systems initiative in Austria. Transparency in harmonized HR development. Executive Search Council and Leadership Quality Gates – forward- looking processes ensure high leadership quality. The quality and perfor- mance of executives are key factors in the continued development and expansion of a competitive workforce. In order to make sure they remain at a consistently high, reviewable and comparable level in all units and na- tional companies, we need systematic and standardized Group-wide suc- cession management. One tried and tested element of this succession management is the Executive Search Council (ESC). In order to achieve comparable, standardized and thus objective candidate selection Group- wide, T-Systems and the Europe board department piloted the Leadership Quality Gates (LQG). As a future quality check for executive appointments, the LQG focus on assessing the social skills as well as the leadership and management qualities of executives. They focus clearly on our Group tar- gets, the Group-wide competency model and our Guiding Principles; their declared aim is to improve management continuity and quality in the com- pany. Following a structured interview, the best candidate in the shortlist of candidates goes through an assessment center in order to give the assess- ment a valid basis. The assessment center comprises business cases, simulations and meetings. The observers then discuss the results and re- commend whether or not the candidate should be appointed. The response to the new method has been favorable from both candidates and observers. According to observers, it allows leadership qualities to be evaluated for which there had not previously been any measuring tool. In the Europe board department, the results are also compared against an external benchmark. The evaluation of the Leadership Quality Gates pilot at Group level will also provide further results.