Contents
Community

Connecting
people

  • Our network connects people. It creates access to knowledge and education and brings us all closer together, no matter where in the world we happen to be. It creates communities of individuals who are interested in the same things. And it lets us relate to those who are different from us yet share the same hopes and dreams. Our network allows us to transcend borders — and build bridges instead of walls.

Connecting people

With our products we enable people worldwide to join communities without being confined to borders. We also benefit within our company when we transcend borders, whether they are between departments, countries or merely in our heads. The diversity of our employees enriches us. And we know that big tasks can only be managed when we work together. That is why we believe in collaboration for finding answers to new challenges in society.

Life is for sharing

  • A fast text message in the family chat-room letting everyone know all is well. An online appeal for donations at a site followed by millions of people. One in- dividual’s idea that turns into a mass movement thanks to social media. Life is for sharing. At its core, the Deutsche Telekom brand stands for everything that brings people together, not what separates them. That’s why we convey our stance in our customer communica­tion too. In 2016, for example, we voiced our support for Europe during the Brexit debate with our “We connect people in Europe” TV campaign. And in 2017 we demonstrated our support for lifestyle diversity with our “For people who know they’re family” campaign.

Finding
Solutions Together

  • We work with about 30,000 suppliers in 80 countries around the globe. Our goal is to ensure that basic human rights are always respected and environmental pollution is avoided in our supply chain. We use various tools to ensure humane working conditions and effective
  • environmental protection among suppliers and manufacturers. For example, the issue of sustainability has a 10 percent weighting in our invitations to bid. Our multiple-step supplier selection process combines a partnership-based approach with supplier audits. In our development program for strategically important suppliers, we look for solutions for better working conditions as well as health and environmental protection. We were able to achieve a reduction of working hours from 68 to 48 per week for one supplier, for example, and help decrease absenteeism by 48 percent for another supplier. Everyone benefits from this, because better working conditions have a positive impact on employee motivation. And this, in turn, improves the suppliers’ productivity as well as the quality of our products.

Creating New Ways of Working

  • Digitization is changing our working world at breathtaking speed. It allows us to work together flexibly and in changing, project-based configurations regardless of where we are. We want to demonstrate the advantages of this change to our employees.
  • That is why we promote virtual collaboration and new ways of working. One way we do this is with the Magenta MOOC, a digital learning platform where we can develop new ideas together worldwide. But we aren’t only creating new virtual places for collaboration; we’re also adapting our actual office spaces to the new world of work through our Future Work program. To this end, we are tearing down walls, both literally and figuratively, and creating bright open office areas that help people relate to each other. That’s how we give new ideas room to flourish.

Christian Illek, Board of Management

The sooner a company recognizes and addresses the topic of digitization, the better prepared it will be for the changes to come and the more able to shape the future for the company and its employees.

Helping Where It
Matters Most

  • When the streams of refugees entered Europe in the fall of 2015, it was clear to us that we had to do something. Among other things, we equipped refugee reception centers with free Wi-Fi and set up an online information portal so that people could remain in touch with their family and friends and familiarize themselves with their new surroundings. We also provided assistance directly at the refugee routes and gave the Greek coast guard technical support when rescuing refugees from the open waters. After providing initial support, the next step is to integrate refugees into the labor market. Work has a lot to do with dignity and creates a sense of normalcy for people whose everyday lives have lost any normalcy they had. It is in part for this reason that we founded the “Internship PLUS direct entry” initiative together with the Deutsche Post DHL Group and Henkel. In this program a six-month orientation phase is followed by a two-year employment contract, which allows the person to gradually assume more responsibility and increase his or her prospects in the labor market.

Equal Opportunities
for All

  • We don’t tolerate ostracism or discrimination but pro­mote openness, tolerance and diversity at our company. All employees should have the same opportunities — regardless of their gender, age, sexual identity, medical requirements,
  • ethnic origin, religion or ideology. We also contribute to this vision with our work-life balance offers as well as our work models tailored to the different phases of life. Flexible part-time work, mobile work, or sabbaticals are used by both men and women alike — and increasingly also by members of management. We also offer prospects for people who elsewhere often fall through the system, such as an entry-level training scheme for socially and educationally disadvantaged youths or part-time training for single parents. In Germany we have been employing significantly more disabled persons than mandated by law for many years. We also promote diversity through cross-border and cross-hierarchy cooperation between our departments and national companies.