Succession is everything. Sooner or later, every company will have to face it. And for many SMEs in this country, in the not too distant future. According to estimates by the Bonn Institute for SME Research, around 190,000 company successions are due to take place between 2022 and 2026 because the management is leaving. The figures vary greatly from state to state – Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg are most affected. Due to demographic factors, the number of handovers per year tends to increase. Since most companies are family businesses, the internal family handover is the number one succession solution. But what happens if there are no competent descendants willing to lead the company? Then there are two options: Management buy-in (MBI) and management buy-out (MBO). What sounds complicated is actually quite simple: In an MBI, the company is sold to an external management, i.e. to a third party. And in the case of an MBO, the company is sold to management from within the company, for example to the management or employees. Whether the succession can be arranged within the family, within the company or outside the company, and which succession solution is best in each case, depends on the individual factors of the company.
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Does HR management still handle a lot of time-consuming, administrative work? Then it’s high time to change that. Societal changes such as the shortage of skilled workers or digitalization are presenting human resources management (HRM) with a major change process. HR must continue to evolve – just like all other areas of business. And technologies make an important contribution to this development. Digitization makes many of the processes more consistent, transparent and error-free. It is a must for all companies that want to develop positively and ensure future-proof HR management. In the HR area, the right software can take away many administrative, time-consuming processes, so that HR managers can devote more time to their employees. And the employees themselves also benefit in many ways from digitized and individualized processes in their everyday work. But as often as one hears and reads about the need for digitalization, so little has actually happened in many companies.
ESG is not a trend, but the way to responsibly shape the future. But what about ESG compliance in your own company? ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance and medium-sized companies are confronted with this in many areas. A sustainable ESG concept helps a company to define and achieve its sustainability goals, to be attractive to banks and to increase the value of the company. When developing and implementing such an individual concept, many questions arise that need to be clarified. A systematic and structured approach ensures the necessary transparency here.
The shortage of skilled workers continues to worsen. New employees are desperately sought across all industries, and it has never been more important for companies to retain their employees. At the same time, many transformation processes are changing the demands on employees, work models and corporate processes.
It is well known how difficult the current framework conditions are for the HR sector.
Those responsible are responding to all these hurdles by rethinking HR management. An appreciative work culture among employees and positive interaction are crucial to success and are top priorities for contemporary HR managers. After all, only companies that stand out from the competition with particularly attractive working conditions and a positive employer image, that successfully implement important transformation processes and establish forward-looking HR models and new ways of working have a chance of attracting good personnel.
Introducing new processes, mastering transformations, overcoming challenges: A company that is intensively concerned with itself can be highly satisfied with its performance. But where is the customer? The needs of customers change at least as fast as the markets. A company must keep up if it does not want to be left behind by the competition. This calls for a consistent change of perspective from time to time: the focus is not on the company and its products, but on the customer and his or her needs.
Key competences are a valuable and vital resource in companies. A competent team makes the organization capable of action and brings the desired success. With the major transformation processes in the world of work, the demands on competences are also changing. At the same time, competent employees are becoming increasingly rare due to the shortage of skilled workers. Strategic competence management is therefore an elementary factor of future-oriented personnel development. Which core competencies are in focus varies from company to company and from sector to sector.
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.
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.
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 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.
