The working world is in flux. As a result of demographic change and digitization, there is now a wide range of options for attractive employment relationships. Accordingly, companies are competing for talent on the labor market. In addition to flexible working conditions, employees expect an appreciative, state-of-the-art management culture. At the same time, many employers value sustainable, innovative, and entrepreneurial thinking on the part of their employees.

Against this backdrop, managers have an important role to play. They must be able not only to lead their employees but also to create a framework that promotes the development of each person and takes his or her individual needs into account. To ensure this, Körber has established five leadership principles.

Our leadership principles

• First: We are entrepreneurs — our actions as an innovative team are globally sustainable and centered on our markets and customers.

• Second: We achieve results — our actions are responsible, agile, bold, and result-oriented.

• Third: We act on a basis of trust — we work together with empathy, transparency, and trust, and we have an open feedback culture that focuses on learning from mistakes.

• Fourth: We empower and strengthen our employees. As pioneers, we value and develop our employees and care deeply about their safety and well-being.

• And fifth: We promote diversity — we know the full breadth of our group-wide skills and competencies and use them in trustworthy ways.

In order to integrate the principles into our daily work, it’s important that ideas are also constantly shared outside the training courses. The workshops are therefore regularly followed by formats that span multiple Business Areas. Here, managers report on their experiences and use suitable examples to show how good leadership can succeed. “We are constantly soliciting feedback about the workshops and the communication formats so that we can refine them,” says Klauk. Appropriate adjustments ensure that a state-of-the-art management culture will continue to be practiced in the future.

Always developing

Even though the principles are already well received by the managers, promoting a modern corporate culture is an ongoing process. Accordingly, Körber targets specific areas for continuous development. “We want to have a culture that makes people want to learn, allows for mistakes, and gives us the opportunity, for example, to promote diversity even more strongly and network our Business Areas even more effectively,” says Klauk, the Head of Learning and Development. There’s always room for improvement, she adds.

“We also want to think more globally about our processes and not primarily focus on our main site in Germany. Our leadership principles put us on the right track here as well,” she concludes.

Further exciting insights into the world of Körber can be found at Insights.