Regional HR Director - Germany

Regional HR Director for acquisition hungry manufacturing company. Fluent English and German and extensive Works Council and Unions experience essential along with an history of enabling business growth.

Remit challenge: Working directly with the CHRO, a team of international HR peers, and key business execs to facilitate increased levels of regional commercial growth driven by regular acquisitions. An immediate priority was to support the implementation of globally aligned HR frameworks to “bed in” historic acquisitions and enable future M&A activity. In this US based company, the hiring execs had limited familiarity with the European market, and had historically struggled to find talent for all business and corporate function roles within the region who offered the types of mindset and experience they required. In addition, there was a regional HR team that hadn’t had strong and positive leadership historically, and HR tools and frameworks were archaic.

Hiring Challenges: Securing solutions focused HR Leaders with deep strategic insight, proven cultural adaptability to work successfully for a US headquartered company, and a stable track record of driving rapid organisational growth is always a challenge in the competitive German market. We also needed to target professionals with remote team leadership experience and exceptional influencing skills - again a tricky combination in this particular market.

Solution: Required extensive consideration of our network already within Germany, and across Europe. Given the salary, package and growth agenda, there was a high level of interest in this role, and significant time was spent in “closing out” professionals whilst ensuring a fair and consistent applicant experience. Through our networks we identified 3 candidates who had been known to us for some years. The HR pedigree of the preferred candidate immediately impressed our hiring execs, and as a “known entity” we were able to action the hire smoothly and with no negotiation stress for our CHRO. 18 months into role this Regional HR Director continues to make impressive headway in transforming the HR function for service delivery and is receiving rave reviews from business leaders across the organisation.