Employee value
Strategy
In 2025, we continued our people agenda, which aims to equip our organization, employees and leaders to thrive in a technology-driven KPN future. With the rise of new technologies and the speed at which these evolve, it is vital to proactively address the challenges of automation and AI through re- and upskilling. This is essential to deliver on our Connect, Activate & Grow strategy and a key part of our responsibility as an employer, creating an environment where people can develop and thrive.
Highlights
We refreshed our leadership profile to define expectations and guide development and performance. It emphasizes encouraging innovation, accelerating diverse talent, navigating change, enabling collaboration and leading with self-awareness, empathy, and resilience.
We believe leaders can only drive change if they understand what AI truly entails. That is why we launched a tailor-made training program for leadership to increase AI literacy and develop the right skills to deal with the various opportunities and threats of AI effectively in their teams.
In line with our belief in a modern and sustainable workplace, we consolidated our offices to enable easier collaboration and creativity. This marked a key step in our hybrid working and office footprint strategy. We also modernized our remaining offices with an innovative and healthy food offering for our staff. Lastly, we provided all our people with a flexible mobility card offering sustainable travel choices and carbon footprint tracking. These initiatives support our ambition to reduce the company’s environmental footprint.
Employee well-being remains a strategic imperative (82% engagement). We launched a company-wide campaign to foster openness around mental health and encourage employees to take the initiative in improving their well-being. We are also offering all colleagues a free preventive health check, providing early insights into personal health and connecting outcomes to support options such as lifestyle coaching and the OpenUp platform.
We strongly believe that investing in our culture enables us to remain innovative and create value for our business, employees and society. We have embedded the three themes of our culture manifesto "Full attention for our customers", "Think big, act now" and "Work together, win together" into our daily work through our KPN Groei (KPN Growth) goal-setting and development conversations. We have created interventions like the "Crucial Conversations" initiative to enable discussions on topics such as performance, collaboration and inclusion. Having challenging and open conversations is not always easy, which is why we are taking further steps to this. In addition, we launched our new code of conduct, supported by a communication campaign and mandatory e-learning to reinforce awareness of desired behavior.
Another initiative supporting KPN’s transformation is the development of a strategic workforce management (SWM) approach, focused on aligning our workforce with our long-term business ambitions. Built on external research and internal insights, SWM will enable fact-based insights into future workforce needs, jobs and possible skill gaps.
Challenges
To unlock efficiency and maximize impact, technology has to be an increasingly integral part of KPN. However, digital transformation and the rapid pace of technological change also present challenges for employee well-being, engagement, and adoption. Building a culture of continuous learning, embedded in daily work, is crucial to preparing our workforce for the future, but achieving this requires a balance between developing new skills and managing everyday work pressure.
Outside in
Technology offers productivity gains, but success depends on employees having the right skills and organizations being designed for flexibility. Studies warn that AI is automating junior roles, the very entry-level positions in which young talent gains experience, creating a paradox in the context of labor shortages. With such labor shortages projected for the Netherlands by 2030, we must invest in talent development, effective technology adoption and organizational set-ups that enable seamless human-digital interaction.
Outlook
Going forward, our focus will be on a skills-based approach to recruitment, talent, learning and organizational development. For us, responsible employment also means actively investing in our people so they can thrive alongside new technologies. By attracting and retaining diverse talent with critical skills, while continuously developing our current employees and leaders, we aim to maintain agility, enhance productivity and secure long-term competitiveness.
