The client was a subsidiary of an international insurance company. The company employs around 300 people at two German locations. In this project, the interim manager worked in HR management on an interim basis. She managed an HR team of six employees and two freelancers. She was also tasked with building up the HR team and optimizing HR processes relating to the employee life cycle.
Supporting recruitment for Sales, Finance and Human Resources
As the HR team was not fully staffed at the start of the project, the interim manager took a very generalist approach. In addition to her management role, she also supported the recruitment of specialists and managers for Sales, Finance and Human Resources.
The challenge in this project was that there had been no handover from the previous HR manager and the HR team was greatly reduced. In addition, there was a change at management level (C-level) immediately after the start of the project. This led to a new clarification of the assignment during the ongoing project and resulted in an additional increase in the complexity of the issues.
The interim manager had to very quickly gain an overview of the issues at hand and prioritize them appropriately, as the project timeframe was comparatively short for the wealth of tasks.
During the course of the assignment, she set up several processes in day-to-day operations relating to the employee life cycle. For example, she introduced templates for the creation of references. She also worked with a specialist lawyer to develop a contract template for working with freelancers.
Handing over a well-positioned HR team to new HR management at the end of the mandate
The interim manager stabilized the HR department during a very difficult personnel phase and began to professionalize the department. She was able to successfully manage the project thanks to her solution-oriented and pragmatic approach and goal-oriented communication with the management and the company.
In the course of this change process, she also managed to recruit the missing employees for the HR team very quickly and to successfully manage and motivate the existing HR team.
At the end of the project, she handed over a well-positioned team and a largely organized field to her successor and thus achieved the project goal within the planned time frame to the client's complete satisfaction.
