Sabine Remdisch and Bernd Althusmann ©Leuphana/Marvin Sokolis
Bernd Althusmann, Lower Saxony's Minister of Economics, Labour, Transport and Digitalisation, will present the award to Sabine Remdisch, Professor of Personnel and Organisational Psychology and Head of the "Digital Leadership Lab".

Lower Saxony's Minister of Digitalisation, Dr Bernd Althusmann, today awarded Leuphana University Lüneburg the title of "Digital Place of Lower Saxony" for its "Digital Leadership Lab" project. "With the 'Digital Landmarks Lower Saxony' award, we are focusing on initiatives, projects, companies and institutions that are particularly committed to digitisation and thus make an important contribution to the innovative strength of our state", said the Minister today in Lüneburg. 

Together with partners, the project "Digital Leadership Lab - Digital Leadership in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises" is looking into the question of how new digital working methods are changing employee leadership and cooperation. The Corona pandemic makes the importance of the project particularly clear: for large parts of the working world, digital working and digital leadership of employees have gone from being an option to an obligation. The project supports small and medium-sized enterprises in the Lüneburg region in adapting to the digital transformation not only in terms of technology, but also in terms of employee management, and in using its potential for social innovation. 

"With the Leadership Lab, we have an exemplary institution in Lower Saxony that set itself the task at an early stage of using the mega-trend of digitalisation in a successful collaboration between science and business for the development of innovative solutions for human resources management", said Minister Althusmann at the presentation of the award.

Since 2018, the Digital Leadership Lab of the Institute for Performance Management has been offering cooperation partners and interested parties the opportunity to familiarise themselves with numerous new technologies in the form of hardware and software solutions that are suitable for use in digital employee management, on an area of around 70 square metres in the middle of Leuphana's central building. The infrastructure includes new communication media such as telepresence robots, interactive whiteboard systems, and virtual reality applications, but also examples of AI-supported decision-making in leadership work. 

Background

Schools, universities, research institutions, start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises as well as industrial companies, craft enterprises, charitable organisations and other institutions can apply to the Digital Agency of Lower Saxony for the award "Digital Places Lower Saxony". It is an award that highlights the exceptional commitment to the success of digitalisation in the respective area. In return, the award winners commit to informing other people and institutions about their path to advancing digitalisation. The "Digital Place of the Year" will be chosen from selected Digital Places in Lower Saxony at TECHTIDE on 1 and 2 December at the exhibition centre in Hanover.