Ximena Pereira· HR Business Partner, Silverline Media
Asked in Job Architecture & Careers ·
I run reward for the European arm of a US-owned packaging manufacturer, about 3,800 employees, 1,100 of them in Germany. Head office is rolling out global titles tied to levels: Manager, Senior Manager, Director and so on.
The difficulty is that some German designations are not really titles in the head-office sense. Holding Prokura is a registered authority to sign for the company, and whether someone is treated as a 'leitender Angestellter' affects their position under works constitution rules. Head office wants 'Director' to map automatically to both, which our local counsel has told us it cannot.
How have others kept these separate from the level without ending up with a German exception to everything?
6 helpful · 2 insightful · 1 agree · 3 replies · 293 views · 4 following
Accepted answer· by Nina Jimenez
Same sector, same problem, about 900 people in Germany. What we did, with our employment lawyers involved throughout: the global level and title apply in Germany unchanged, and the framework document has a short country annex stating that no level confers signing authority or a particular status under works constitution law, and that those are decided case by case. We also agreed the annex with the works council before launch, which mattered more than the wording. Of our 31 people at director level, only 12 hold Prokura. Nobody finds that odd now, because the two were never linked on paper.
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Total Rewards Manager, Steinbach Industrie
We treat them as attributes of the person, not of the job or the level. In our HR system there is a separate field for signing authority and another for executive-employee status, each maintained by legal with its own approval route. The global title sits beside them and implies nothing.
It took one slide to explain to head office once we framed it as 'authority is granted, level is evaluated'.
Reward Partner, Calibre Software
Accepted answer
Same sector, same problem, about 900 people in Germany. What we did, with our employment lawyers involved throughout: the global level and title apply in Germany unchanged, and the framework document has a short country annex stating that no level confers signing authority or a particular status under works constitution law, and that those are decided case by case.
We also agreed the annex with the works council before launch, which mattered more than the wording. Of our 31 people at director level, only 12 hold Prokura. Nobody finds that odd now, because the two were never linked on paper.
Senior Compensation Analyst, Qasr Holdings
One addition: check your other countries before you call it a German exception. We found the same pattern with registered directors in the UK and with statutory titles in a couple of Asian entities. One annex format covering 'designations with legal effect' for all countries looked much less like special pleading.
