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Starting Up and Managing Your Staff |
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 Starting up a company in Germany almost certainly means building up a
local team. Experience shows, that this issue causes many
misunderstandings and frustrations if not handled carefully.
A typical professional career in Germany may differ from patterns
familiar from home.
Beginning with a different educational system and
ending up with the impacts of strong fluctuations in professional
chances, e.g. for IT personnel, engineers, natural scientists or East
Germans, making CV’s difficult to assess without an understanding of
the German labour market background.
Labour and social legislation in Germany results not only in high
indirect labour costs, but also in limiting the managerial flexibility
by regulating:
* The form and time frames for work contracts
* The conditions and procedures under which an employees contract can successfully be terminated
* The rights of work councils to participate in HR work and by this even in the operational management
* The rights of handicapped employees
Any mistake in handling personnel matters may easily end up in legal
proceedings and as jurisdiction in general favours the employee, the
court decision is likely to be costly for the employer, even if it’s
only for a financial compensation summing up to a couple of monthly
salaries.
What may be worse is a transfer of this decision to further similar
cases multiplying expenditures, or the decision, that the company will
have to continue the employment. These decisions may even endanger the
survival of the company and it’s for this reason that the German
government at present is thinking heavily about lightening restrictions
mainly impeding hiring decisions of smaller companies.
The worst, but certainly not rare procedure for foreign start-ups is to
handle personnel matters on the basis of regulations valid in the home
country.
It’s not by mere accident that many HR officers in Germany have not
qualified in HR management but in law, considering correct legal
procedures more important than emphasis on social competence applied to
the careful management of human resources.
Of course HR management may look easy as long as the recruitment
process has resulted in a good team, the management has been able to
create a favourable climate and business is running well to allow for
demanding tasks and attractive compensation schemes.
The critical test of the quality of HR management comes with an
unfavourable development like a wrong hiring decision, a loss of
competitiveness, mergers rsp, takeovers or a general economic crisis.
The timely reduction of personnel may then turn out to be much more
difficult than the build up.
As long as the start up company cannot afford to employ a qualified
in-house personnel manager, it should therefore rely on outside advice
concerning the selection and contracting of personnel, procedures of
the personnel management and especially the handling of personnel
problems.
The overall objective should be to build a highly motivated and
efficient team performing without frictions, giving no reason for
thoughts on the election of a work council. Any reasonable compromise -
possibly with the assistance of an outside coach - may be less time and
cost consuming than the involvement of a lawyer and a hearing. What
sailors used to state on the sea holds also true for a chamber of
justice: in the face of god and before a court man is left alone.
Therefore it’s better to stay on save ground, which in this case means,
rely on indigenous competence.
 Dr. Dietrich Fischer
SELECTEAM
+49 (0) 89 6146 5634
www.selecteam.de
SELECTEAM is a private, independent Personnel and Management Consulting
company with head offices in Berlin, Dresden, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt,
Hamburg and Munich.
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