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Category: Corporate & Business Development

What should your company look like in the future and how do you ensure its competitiveness? With active corporate development, you systematically address these questions about the future.

Ann-Katrin Hardenberg

Core competence in compliance: communication

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Kernkompetenz in der Compliance - Kommunikation im Unternehmen

Well-managed compliance protects companies from criminal offenses, breaches of rules, unethical behavior and the associated financial losses and reputational damage. But even the most sophisticated compliance organization can only be effective if communication is right. It builds the bridge between the rules and regulations and acceptance within the company with transparent information and an exchange based on trust. Compliance management can only be successful if everyone is informed about the regulations, duties, codes of conduct and responsibilities, can understand all the rules and supports the associated goals.

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Ann-Katrin Hardenberg

Ukraine War: Managing Liquidity in the Crisis

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Liquidität in der Krise managen

The war in Ukraine is hitting large parts of the economy with full force. There is hardly a company that is not directly or indirectly affected by the consequences. “Cash is king” is especially true in crisis situations, and liquidity management is a vital instrument for making liquidity bottlenecks transparent or averting insolvency if possible. […]

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Ann-Katrin Hardenberg

War in Ukraine: Effective crisis management in small and medium-sized enterprises

Crises management

Delivery problems, staff shortages, trade relations: The war in Ukraine is having an impact on small and medium-sized businesses, and every company is affected differently. How strongly this war will affect the economy is hardly predictable and depends, among other things, on how long the war will continue and how far the situation will deteriorate.

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Katharina Auer

Everything is Succession! And therefore, a Must-Have in Corporate Management

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It is not about horror stories, of which we know many. It is solely about how you prepare your business for future developments and for the unpredictability of life. Succession is not only the planned end of your entrepreneurial activity, but also the abrupt, hopefully temporary loss of an entrepreneur. From the responsibility towards the ecosystem of your business follows the preparation for the worst-case scenario – even if it will hopefully never occur.

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Katharina Auer

Who`s perfect? Correct Compliance Organization

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“Organizations do not commit violations of the law or misconduct. These are committed by people in the organizations.”

Compliance combines goals and functions to comply with laws and rules in the company and to create the framework that misconduct is avoided. In practice, compliance looks different for every company: Of course, every company has to adhere to the legal provisions, thus acts “compliantly” per se. But for a craft business, other laws and internal rules are important than for an IT company or a logistics company. All internal rules that go beyond the law are formed from industry practices, stakeholder expectations and corporate values.

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Katharina Auer

The Changing Work Environment: Competence Management Systems in SMEs

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Up and down the country, companies are rumbling. There are already too few skilled workers and in the coming years masses of baby boomers will leave the labour market. The large vacancies that will arise here cannot be covered by the next generation by a long shot. In parallel, current topics such as digitalisation, sustainability or supply chains demand fundamental transformation processes from companies. New structures and competences are needed for all these challenges. This presents HR managers with the task of mastering the balancing act between the changed labour market and the changed corporate world. To do this, they need a systematic and structured approach to competences. Thus, competence management is increasingly moving into the focus of many companies. Never before has it been more urgent to know the competencies of employees and to develop personnel in a targeted manner in order to secure the company’s ability to act and innovate.

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Katharina Auer

Compliant, transparent, anonymous: Organizing the Whistleblower System properly

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Courageous? Disloyal? Whistleblowers are people who blow the whistle on other people or organizations. For these people, it is usually important that existing regulations and laws are observed and that misconduct to the detriment of organizations and society is stopped. Thus, they open up many opportunities with their tips: If critical information about wrongdoings in the company is not made public, but is received through internal reporting channels, the management level can deal with it proactively.

In this way, financial damage can be averted, grievances can be uncovered at an early stage and company departments can be optimized. A positive reporting culture that signals that critical knowledge is welcome and does not fall on deaf ears increases employee satisfaction and improves the image. In this respect, the whistleblower system, which the EU Whistleblower Directive prescribes for all companies with more than 50 employees, is a good way to make one’s own company more transparent.

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Katharina Auer

Sustainability Reporting: Its consequences for SMEs

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What was previously very good for SMEs, but not mandatory, is becoming a “must have”: CSR reporting is moving into the SME sector and will be given a permanent place in the management report as of 1 January 2024. This puts non-financial, i.e. sustainable reporting, on the same pedestal as financial reporting.

The EU Commission’s planned changes to the extended reporting obligation are not surprising; after all, the sustainable contribution of all companies plays an important role in Europe’s sustainability transformation. Here, reporting is the toolbox to ensure the implementation of these sustainable economic measures.

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Katharina Auer

The cooperation with an outside director needs preparation and leadership culture

Die Zusammenarbeit mit einem Fremdgeschäftsführer braucht Vorbereitung und Führungskultur

The decision to bring an external managing director into your own company requires a change in the owner’s leadership behavior.

In one of our client’ companies, this decision was made some time ago – with the best of intentions and a disastrous outcome!

The owner of a medium-sized company hired a managing director for a new subsidiary for the first time and renounced the usual board position himself.  He had decided to do so for a variety of reasons and postulated that competence and responsibility were inseparable. The newcomer could and must manage his area of responsibility independently.

This sounded interesting to the “new guy”. He had gained second-tier experience with a larger competitor and now wanted to have overall responsibility.

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Katharina Auer

Implement the Whistleblower Directive and create a legally secure Whistleblowing System

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COMPLIANCE - Die Whistleblower-Richtlinie umsetzen

The implementation of the EU Whistleblower Directive is on the agenda of many small and medium-sized companies. Managing directors and compliance officers immediately think of lawyers and software, but it takes a lot more to implement the guideline not only in a legally secure way, but also in a motivating and profitable way.

Our expert Karin Scherer puts it in a nutshell: “Many managing directors would like to receive information from the staff when the company is damaged, whether negligently or intentionally, internally by employees or by external persons. Our experiences range from reaching into the till, theft of goods to sexual harassment at the workplace. All incidents in which those in the know or affected did not know how to act, looked a way as a precaution – and in which the management would have liked to have been informed at an early stage, to protect the employees affected and the company.”

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