The Ahold Group entered the German market in January 2012 with a convenience store concept (Albert Heijn to go). The Interim Manager was appointed as HR Business Partner for this project. It was a classic "green-field project" in which there was initially neither an office nor a process structure for the planned business in Germany.
6 stores successfully opened
In the HRBP project, the interim manager paved the way for setting up all HR processes and commissioned an agency to recruit the necessary support and store personnel. She designed a cultural awareness workshop for intercultural understanding with the Dutch colleagues. Together with the Ahold colleagues in the Netherlands, she set up the staff training for the new stores to be opened in NRW. Her focus was on communication between the new German headquarters and the group headquarters in Zaandam/NL. A great deal of flexibility was required on both sides in order to successfully run the project and open the first store in September 2012. By the time the tasks were handed over to an Ahold colleague, 6 stores had been successfully opened.
