noventum is once again among the Top 100 of GREAT PLACE to WORK®
Interview with Frank Petersen, head of human resources
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Organizational Development, People & Culture, noventum
noventum consulting is among Germany’s 100 best employers! At the festive gala in the Titanic Chaussee Hotel in Berlin, noventum’s managing director, Uwe Rotermund, his deputy and head of human resources, Frank Petersen, and several employees accepted the award. With this outstanding rating in the group of companies with 101 to 205 employees, noventum once again obtained a place in the first row of attractive employers. In an anonymous questionnaire, the employees assessed their employer in detail and provided their employer with an excellent report. Ever since 2006, noventum consulting has participated in the nationwide competition repeatedly with great success. In 2012, noventum’s employees catapulted their employer into first place in its category for the third time in a row. The IT management consulting firm has now been able to continue these successes.
Frank Petersen, head of human resources at Germany’s favourite employer, in a novum interview, is elated by the repeated success of his company.
novum: Mr Petersen, what makes noventum consulting a special employer?
Frank Petersen: It might be something very special that we, as a company, have always oriented ourselves towards being a good place for employees from day one. noventum has been in the marketplace as an IT consulting firm since 1996 and we have always taken the special challenges of our industry to be our driving force. Today, we are – even more so than at the beginning of the millennium, – in a place where we are urgently looking to attract and retain good employees. That being the case, the idea of creating an attractive work environment somehow becomes part of one’s genome.
novum: What does this mean specifically?
Frank Petersen: There is hardly any area of noventum in which the question “What does this mean for the employees?” does not play a role. This applies to our working hours, the workspace equipment, our continuing education measures, and a lot more. We have summarised this quite nicely on our website under the heading “This is how we roll”. Ultimately, this also affects the relationship with our customers. I am convinced that, in the long run, only satisfied employees can and want to achieve top performance. Therefore, our employees take first place for us.
novum: But you, as a consulting company, are in competition in the marketplace.
Frank Petersen: Yes, and in most cases, we are among the very best! But it would, of course, be naïve to close our eyes to the fact that, in our dynamic work environment, performance is achieved under constant growth pressure. Digitalisation is contributing its share to this, and we, as an IT management consulting firm, are right in the midst of this continuous process. But if you do not bear in mind the human side of the equation, the performance concept is running awry and you ultimately lose the trust of your employees. To boil it down to a somewhat striking denominator: a culture of performance and a culture of trust within the company are mutually dependent on each other. You cannot have one without the other.
novum: Under the topic of “Culture Change Management”, noventum has been providing consulting to other companies that want to improve their business culture for several years now. Why did you, as a proven expert, once again participate in the GPtW competition this year?
Frank Petersen: We did this for both ourselves as well as for our employees, not for our consulting business. After we placed first among the awarded companies three times in a row seven years ago, we have subjected ourselves to both the questionnaire and the assessment by the GPtW Institute repeatedly, but didn’t publicise the results. We are taking seriously what we advise our customers to do: it is only through continuous supervision that you can ensure that the valuable underlying thought of the GREAT PLACE to WORK® initiative is not being “administered” but actually lived. And at this point, well – we wanted to prove ourselves once more under competition conditions.
novum: How do you, as an IT company, deal with the lack of qualified candidates available?
Frank Petersen: First of all, in recent years, we have professionalised our human resources work. By now, more people are working on this topic at our firm and we are also positioned better technologically. The IT support for the human resources process, in particular, nowadays allows you to work very precisely and with foresighted. Which is something that our job applicants and employees feel and experience as well. These days, IT support for HR processes is also one of our IT consulting topics. In addition, we communicate on all channels how attractive it is to work at noventum, e.g. in a short film worth watching.
novum: A few weeks ago, noventum won a marketing prize for its employer branding concept.
Frank Petersen: Indeed, and our managing director, Uwe Rotermund, summarised it quite nicely: “For our company, the 2019 Marketing Prize is a special confirmation of our work since it is an intersection of so many things that we represent: we are a GREAT PLACE to WORK® for our employees, we advise other companies regarding their human resources work, and our agile in-house agency provides the perfect framework for our recruiting activities.” Let’s keep it going like this.