Successfully outsource HR department
We cover the complete range of HR competencies for our clients, regardless of their size: retention management, recruitment of special staff, performance management, labor law issues, employer branding etc.. Very small companies and those with fewer than 500 employees would otherwise not be able to afford this, and yet they need to demonstrate these competencies in the ever tougher battle for talent. Our local recruiter draws on the knowledge of his colleagues at allaboutHRLaw and additionally has our experienced HR manager as a direct sparring partner. This way, our clients can be sure of high-quality HR work and remain competitive. In addition, we are paid per supervised employee and therefore scale ourselves. Capacity bottlenecks, such as those caused by increased recruiting needs, are compensated for — unnoticed by the client. Furthermore, our fees are similar to the costs of an internal HR department. This is flanked with profound experience in building HR departments at start-ups. Therefore, for the companies that know us, it is not a big consideration whether to hire us again.
Our customers are companies with between 5 and 500 employees and come from a wide range of industries: from e‑commerce to crafts to classic production companies, almost all facets are included.
For example, from 2012 to the beginning of 2016 (and the five hundredth employee), we set up and managed the entire HR department for windeln.de. Thermondo GmbH — another exciting client of ours for whom we do all the HR work — is revolutionizing the German energy market with a combination of e‑commerce company and craft business. We also support smaller companies, such as voycer AG, which offers new social engagement formats, or General Interfaces GmbH, which is revolutionizing interface management.
No matter what industry the company is from or what size the company is, they all have one thing in common: quality and professionalism is important to them and they have understood that this only works with suitable, satisfied employees. We support them in this and this is also the trend of the times. — Human resources work is becoming increasingly important, as this is the means to increase the company’s performance through capable and mature employees. This sounds rather trite, but it is a challenge to create a company that is attractive to highly qualified employees and at the same time offers them a place where they can deliver high performance. And that is exactly the goal of our work.
Certainly, the big issue is the shortage of skilled workers and also the classic minefields, e.g. how precisely and clearly the profile is defined that you are looking for and to what extent everyone agrees on it, but also how profoundly you proceed in the selection. The crux of the matter from our perspective — this is where my old McKinsey school comes through — is creativity, analysis and problem-solving ability in the search.
We spend a lot of time thinking carefully about where the candidates we’re looking for are hanging out, what appeals to them, and how we can attract them to our clients. We recruit on behalf of our clients. Through this approach, Thermondo, for example, has grown by over 100 employees with us in about a year with a diverse workforce of tradespeople and e‑commerce employees. Of course, we also have the advantage that we can draw on the experience of our colleagues in other companies and exchange ideas here. If we find that a profile does not exist on the market, creativity and problem-solving skills are again required to adapt profiles or even redefine positions within the company.
When it comes to selection, big issue is that many companies stay on the surface with their conversations and questions. Here, probing and understanding why the applicant did what is one of the main success factors in assessing whether he/she is a good fit for the company and the job.
About Tereza Sommerfeld
Tereza Sommerfeld founded and manages allaboutHRLaw. The idea of offering companies an HR department that is more powerful and flexible than what small and medium-sized companies and start-ups can map themselves was triggered by an initial customer and became more and more solidified. This involves:
i) Professional and analytically flawless personnel work
ii) Feasible, simple and clearly understandable solutions
iii) Company-specific best solutions
Tereza Sommerfeld holds a degree in business administration and is a lawyer admitted to the courts of Munich and Prague. Ms. Sommerfeld has been serving companies in the human resources field for over 15 years. She began her career at McKinsey&Co. and later moved to HayGroup in the US and UK, where she expanded her expertise to include soft skills. Since returning from abroad, she has focused on high-quality and cost-effective HR work for small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups. Mrs. Sommerfeld lives in Munich with her husband and three children
About allaboutHRLaw
allaboutHRLaw’s goal is to offer small and medium-sized companies, as well as start-ups, the human resources service that will make them competitive, today and in the future, with increasingly scarce resources in the labor market. allaboutHRLaw offers one-stop HR and legal services: pragmatic, professional and passionate.