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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“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.
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.
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.
“Will the company continue? What do you mean? Yes, what else?”
This is a typical reaction of many managing directors when they are asked about the problem of whether a running business is to be assumed in a valuation of the company. The reason for this question may be overindebtedness or payment problems. In this case, the regulations of insolvency law give reason to assume that the company (GmbH, AG, GmbH & Co. KG) can no longer be continued. Therefore, in this situation, the management responsible for preparing the annual financial statements should not rely on the fact that it can continue to prepare the balance sheet at going concern values. It must first be ensured that the going concern premise is met, i.e., that it can be assumed in the evaluation of the company’s activities that it can be continued.
It’s the combination that makes the difference! Different skills, practical knowledge and solid expertise are the basis of our business. As diverse as our team is, our common basis is our affinity for medium-sized businesses and for the people who shape them.
Our Consulting Partner Karin Scherer
“If you want to know something, ask an experienced person and not a scientist” – Chinese wisdom
The new year marks the beginning of the annual financial reporting season. All companies that prepare financial reports have to deal with the issues surrounding the preparation of their annual financial statements. Even if many of those responsible are not aware of it: accounting compliance forms the foundation here. It ensures that all relevant accounting rules are recognized and applied, and that the company’s assets and liabilities are valued correctly, so that the annual financial report is prepared in accordance with the rules.
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.
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.
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.”
