At SAP, New Work is NOT just another buzzword

On May 5, 2022, almost 300 hundred SAP colleagues from around the globe convened virtually for the first SAP New Work Festival, to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the creation of the New Work Movement at SAP in 2017.

For those who have joined the Movement since,?“It all started with a breakfast.”?has become a true motto,?because?that’s exactly how it started.?

Lots has happened since those early days at the?SAP AppHaus in Heidelberg, Germany:?

• An open group of enthusiasts now structures and coordinates all related activities, living and role-modeling the principles of self-organization, transparency, and distributed decision-making and leadership.
• Events with internal pioneering units and external inspiring speakers happen every month.
• Active practitioners drive progressive ways of working in many parts of the company. Yes, New Work is indeed more than “doing Agile in Scrum teams” - even in a software company.
• The New Work Practices team in HR’s Future of Work unit looks after the integration of the Movement into the formal organization, a key success factor for further progress in a hybrid work world.

In the first hour of the entertaining and informative event, participants learned about the history of the Movement, gained key insights during a panel discussion with early New Work adopters at SAP, and heard how our Chief Future of Work Office Christian Schmeichel envisions the transformation of SAP in a complex future world.?The session ended with a video crowd-sourced from enthusiasts and practitioners.

Part 2 was set up as an open space and was dedicated to deeper discussions with pioneering practitioners and units. It also covered the ins-and-outs of how the Movement organizes itself and how colleagues can get involved.

A special thank you goes to our panelists and New Work All Stars Christian Schmeichel, Nicole H?ffner, Stefanie Kübler, Guilherme Lage and Toby Haug,

and to the contributors in our breakout sessions, Carsten Danner, Jochen Schneider, Andreas Mohr, Natalia Soler Gonzalez,?Katja Lukkarinen, Holly Hammerton, and Nina-Marlene Senst.

Members of the New Work Movement’s Events Circle took care of the overall organization: Excellent job, Ines Luther-Wallrabenstein, Nina-Marlene Senst, Franzi Weis, Torben Schardt!

And to conclude:?When participants were asked “What comes to your mind when you hear the term New Work?”, it became obvious that the Movements’ New Work message is spreading?fast ??