Christian P. Illek will become the new Board member for Human Resources at Deutsche Telekom. Illek (50) currently serves as Managing Director of Microsoft Germany. He is not an unknown quantity at Deutsche Telekom: from 2007 to 2012, he was responsible for marketing activities in Germany, among other duties. Before joining Deutsche Telekom, he held various managerial positions at Bain & Company and at Dell. Illek, who holds a PhD, studied Chemistry and Business Administration in Düsseldorf and Munich.
"In Christian Illek, we have gained an experienced manager with intimate knowledge of the market, the company and the challenges we face. His reputation at Deutsche Telekom is impeccable", said Ulrich Lehner, Deutsche Telekom Supervisory Board chair.
"We have reached a good conclusion after a long, fair process.Christian Illek is the right choice for the digitization of the workplace. Deutsche Telekom’s 240 000 employees will continue to be represented by a labor director at board level”, said Lothar Schröder, deputy chairman of the Supervisory Board.
"Business-centric HR work is essential to the ongoing transformation of Deutsche Telekom. Christian Illek understands these requirements and the changes that result from digitization better than nearly anyone else.
I look forward to working with him. We share a long, successful career path together, which we will now be able to continue in a new constellation," reported Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges.
Lehner and Höttges personally thanked Thomas Kremer, Board Member responsible for Data Privacy, Legal Affairs and Compliance, who temporarily assumed the additional duties of Board member HR after Marion Schick had left.
Tim Höttges added: "Thomas Kremer set important accents during the lengthy transition: the 2014 wage negotiations were the first in many years that we were able to bring to a positive conclusion for both sides, without requiring a mediator. I am also thankful to Thomas for making the digitization of the workplace into a strategic HR topic: as a result, Deutsche Telekom is the first company in Germany – and the only one so far – to include digitization as a strategic part of career training and launch a training program for cyber security professionals."
About Deutsche Telekom
Deutsche Telekom is one of the world's leading integrated telecommunications companies with over 142 million mobile customers, 31 million fixed-network lines and more than 17 million broadband lines (as of December 31, 2013). The Group provides fixed-network, mobile communications, Internet and IPTV products and services for consumers and ICT solutions for business customers and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in around 50 countries and has approximately 229,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenues of EUR 60.1 billion in the 2013 financial year – more than half of it outside Germany.