“No one wanted to come back.”

In Dr. Matthias Schuster’s experience, HR strategy is pivotal when it comes to the transfer of employees. Giving the new staff members a positive outlook sets the outsourcing project on track for success.

The transfer of employees is a critical success factor of any outsourcing project. So I was all the more pleased when the HR Director of a large international customer asked me to, “handle staff transition for this project exactly like last time,” and added: “When it comes to HR strategy and smooth transfer of employees, T-Systems is way ahead of the competition.” Last year, the customer, headquartered in Germany, succesfully outsourced a significant part of its IT to us – along with 200 of its workforce.

The project leader and I were particularly glad given that it was an international outsourcing arrangement involving a vast array of corporate cultures at multiple locations.

As confirmed by countless studies, integrating new IT colleagues is quite rightly regarded as a potential stumbling block for these kinds of deals. And the transfer of employees, also known as HR transition, is still seen in a negative light, not just in Germany.

In over one hundred outsourcing and merger and acquisition projects in recent years, T-Systems has successfully taken on more than a thousand employees from customers. But successfully integrating personnel is not a question of routine. Above all, it’s a question of respect: we want them to feel welcome.
With that in mind, we start involving future team members as early as possible. We work with them to plan for the future and provide career development opportunities when they join our departments. We also put an end to their uncertainty – we let them know how much we benefit from having new IT colleagues with backgrounds in a wide variety of industries.

Four of our staff members are profiled in this issue of Best Practice. Formerly employed by our customers, they joined us in the course of major outsourcing deals. They speak candidly about their experiences, concerns and fears: they’re talking about life-changing issues. This depth of feeling is echoed in the description by an HR executive at another international customer. When his employees switched to T-Systems, he said: “We are extremely proud of what we have achieved in the HR department.”

In my view, the minimal staff turnover is the most rewarding confirmation of our approach to the transfer and integration of human resources. Dr. Hans-Joachim Popp, the CIO of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) has witnessed a perfect example. Of the nearly 100 IT specialists who transferred from DLR to T-Systems: “Not one wanted to come back“.

Best regards,
Dr. Matthias Schuster