SAATKORN · Gero Hesse

Special: Alles zu den #femaleHRexcellence Awards mit Prof. Dr. ANJA LÜTHY

·31 min·3 clips

Ten women will compete in Berlin by pitching their innovative HR projects in just six minutes each.

1. SAATKORN, a podcast about HR and work culture, presents a special episode previewing the ten shortlisted nominees for the Female HR Excellence Award 2024/25. 2. Host Gero leads the conversation with Prof. Dr. Anja Lüthy, who is the initiator of the Female HR Excellence network and award, co-led with colleague Fatou. 3. The episode's core purpose is to introduce all ten nominees alphabetically before the award ceremony on November 6 in Berlin, building anticipation without revealing the winner. 4. Lisa Augustziak from McDonald's submitted a campaign encouraging more women to become McDonald's franchise owners, drawing on her personal experience as a mother of twins. 5. Susanne Berthold-Neumann from Lufthansa developed Part-Time-Pro, a campaign recruiting Finance and IT professionals willing to work 70-80% hours, offering a one-year internal exploration period before committing to a role. 6. Egi Bolt-Bartar founded Human Health Resource after writing her master's thesis on employee stress and mental health, leaving a stable job to go independent — companies she coaches report 13% fewer sick days. 7. Sophie Descollas from company 42 developed the Skillplay method with a colleague, a matrix tool that maps employee tasks to motivation levels and identifies which repetitive tasks should be automated by AI. 8. Katja Hecht at the Bundesverband der Deutschen Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken ran workshops with Gen Z to understand their workplace expectations, leading to job rotation programs across German cities. 9. Lavinia JISA and Sarah Moritz at Mediamarkt Saturn submitted their LGBTQIA+ initiative Pride at MMS, which brought 55 employees to Munich's CSD march and has reached 400 workshop participants to date. 10. Marie Kanelopoulos of Dann Berlin works on corporate succession planning, drawing attention to the fact that 19 million baby boomers will leave the German workforce by 2035, with only 12 million younger workers entering. 11. Sophie Kruse at AIDA Cruises built a cultural project to create a shared identity between shipboard staff and land-based employees, using internal employer branding across a large and geographically dispersed workforce. 12. Susanne Schwarz independently built S.H.E. (Struktur, Haltung, Einrichtungsbegeisterung), an AI HR co-pilot for Hettich Group's HR department that answers questions on onboarding, contracts, and probation-period procedures. 13. Gabriela Zitt at Exeta AG launched "Date Us If You Love IT," an employer branding campaign that used AI image generators to give all employees a unified retro-style appearance for social media and subway advertising. 14. Lüthy notes that the jury unanimously shortlisted many of the nominees, emphasizing that the criteria include innovation, measurable business improvement, courage, and use of AI. 15. Sponsors for the Berlin event include Open Up (founder Reis Koppens and employee Jonas Commander), Jo Dirks of CyQuest, and Andreas Bachmann, CEO of Adacor, enabling all ten shortlisted women to attend. 16. Lüthy highlights that companies from sectors not typically associated with progressive HR — Volksbanken, Hettich hardware — are represented alongside consumer-facing brands like Lufthansa and Mediamarkt. 17. The episode has a conversational, enthusiastic tone, with Lüthy describing each project from memory and Gero reacting in real time; neither has met most nominees in person before November 6. 18. Both hosts acknowledge the difficult economic climate for HR budgets, making the ten nominees' self-initiated projects more notable. 19. HR professionals and business leaders interested in German employer branding, women in leadership, and practical AI adoption in HR departments would find this episode useful. 20. Listeners who prefer purely English-language content or are uninterested in German corporate HR awards will likely skip.

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