Deutsche Telekom said its domestic operation plans to bundle its services into a single service unit as a next step in its transformation strategy, and appointed a leading executive at T-Systems to take charge of the project.
Ferri Abolhassan, who is currently director of IT at the group’s corporate customer arm, has been appointed to the newly created position of director of service transformation at Telekom Deutschland with effect from October.
The unit also plans to appoint a new director of technology after it was announced that Bruno Jacobfeuerborn would take on the positions of managing director at Deutsche Funkturm and CTO of Deutsche Telekom’s newly created technology and innovation board department with effect from Jan. 1, 2017.
Niek Jan van Damme, board member for Germany at Deutsche Telekom, said the transformation of Telekom Deutschland is the next stage in the operator’s strategy programme for the period from 2015 to 2018.
“I am very pleased that Ferri Abolhassan will now be able to contribute his expertise and his experience in such a decisive area. He brought service quality at T-Systems to a new level and will also provide new, important impetus at Telekom Deutschland,” van Damme said.
Telekom Deutschland did not respond to questions about which services would be brought into the new unit or when this process would be completed. However, the operator did note that the merging of the service areas “is a major component of an agreement reached with the employee representatives on the development of Telekom Deutschland.”
There will be some changes to the working hours of employees, with weekly working hours increased by up to four hours, depending on requirements. Working hours can also be reduced from 2019.
According to Martin Seiler, HR director at Telekom Deutschland, "this allows us new breathing space in our HR planning looking towards the future, so that we can meet the dynamic challenges posed by the competition and can tackle growing levels of digitisation."
Earlier, media reports suggested that the reorganisation could have an impact on up to 15,000 employees, although no job cuts were planned.
Telekom Deutschland manages the fixed and mobile networks of Deutsche Telekom in Germany and is responsible for both consumers and business customers. As part of the Deutsche Telekom group strategy programme, the operator’s network is due to be completely based on IP technology from 2018.
For more:
- see the Telekom Deutschland release
- see this Reuters article
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