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Cologne/Düsseldorf, November 24, 2021 - The management and technology consulting firm Detecon has received two awards in the renowned "Best of Consulting" competition organized annually by WirtschaftsWoche. Detecon was the first-place winner in the "Organization" category with "We.Work.New," a project for shaping the new world and way of working at the ICT service provider T-Systems. In the category "Special Prize Digitalization", the consultants were awarded third place for the continuing education program "Digital Skills Compass" at the energy supplier Uniper. The teams, led by project managers Verena Vinke (We.Work.New) and Volker Rieger (Digital Skills Compass), received their awards on November 23 at a gala event at the InterContinental Hotel in Düsseldorf..

Working in the New Normal: In the 2020 pandemic, 28,000 employees worldwide also moved into home offices overnight at ICT service provider T-Systems. T-Systems used this moment of change to design a new, hybrid working environment ("We.Work.New") that would combine the best of worlds such as "office" and "home". The concepts were developed with the consultants and new work experts at Detecon: at the heart of the transformation were fields of action such as People, Places, Tools & Organization. Here, for example, new office concepts were created so that, in the sense of activity-based working, clear criteria exist as to whether activities can take place in the office, at home, or on the road. Unneeded space was reduced, and in return ten central "Meet and Connect Hubs" were created as places for exchange and creative work. Learning Journeys, guidelines and change initiatives, as well as numerous digital tools and technologies, enable employees to make flexible and productive use of the new paths in this modern working world. The innovative building technology and space concepts were realized and implemented with the support of Deutsche Telekom's GSUS Real Estate Management.

"As the world around us changes, we should also rethink the way we work," says Jennifer Bath, program manager of We.Work.New at T-Systems, explaining the motivation behind the major project. "We want to enable a new and better way of working and strengthen identification. The good feedback shows: Not only employees, but also customers perceive us as a pioneer in new work and digital collaboration." Project manager Verena Vinke from Detecon explains the success factors of the large-scale project: "We have consciously taken the path of the employee experience. This includes not only a newly designed office and more flexibility and self-organization, but also the equipment with modern, digital tools which actually generate fun in their use. It is crucial for lived New Work that all these dimensions and fields of action are addressed, as it were." 

Further information on the topic of "New Work, Agility & Culture".

Compass for Digital Transformation

In the category "Special Prize Digitalization", the Detecon consultants led by Managing Partner Volker Rieger won third place with the project "Digital Skills Compass". The team developed a future-oriented continuing education program for the energy supplier Uniper in order to equip employees - power plant engineers as well as energy traders - with skills for the digital energy world. Based on competency models, multi-stage learning journeys were set up to develop the new competencies in the right depth. The skills that Uniper is building here range from agile working with Scrum and DevOps, for example, to knowledge of algorithms and coding, to an understanding of how to analyze and interpret data. A broad spectrum of analog and digital learning formats is offered to specifically address different learning personalities: It can range from brain snacks, i.e., short "information morsels" in the form of videos, podcasts, or articles, to loosely organized barcamp sessions, to community formats such as lean coffee sessions. 

Detecon project manager Volker Rieger explains the program: "In addition to the clear competency model and the innovative learning principle of the Learning Journeys, the decisive factor for the success and the high acceptance of the program is the fact that all of the contents are selected or developed by internal experts and competency bearers and are thus directly relevant for everyday work. We support the experts with a portfolio of learning modules and assistance in the area of didactics. This has created a new learning culture at Uniper."

Stephan van Aaken, SVP Digital Trading at Uniper: "We are very consistently focusing on digitalization. This transformation runs through all areas of our company and encompasses many topics. It is therefore crucial to have a learning culture in which employees want to develop on their own initiative and take responsibility for their own training. The Digital Skills Compass does an excellent job of addressing this commitment and the diversity of different learning types."

Werner Hub and Hermann Weber, responsible for the concept, pilot and rollout in the Asset division at Uniper, emphasize: "The program has been very well received. We are very proud that around 90 percent of the participants said they would like to take part in further Learning Journeys. Certainly one reason: we impart knowledge that is relevant to the future of our business in a modern and accessible way."

Further information on the topic of "Digital Strategy & Innovation“