Personnel risk
The Personnel risk is a term used in business administration. The consideration of staff (in this context often referred to as “ human capital ”) from the point of view of risk - compared to similar analyzes of other factors of production - is so far not very widespread. In the annual reports of German stock corporations, there are currently isolated indications of a rudimentary personnel risk management, whereby it is almost exclusively about retention measures ( retention) is less about the preventive defense of the entire risk spectrum. The staff has characteristics that make them significantly more sensitive in terms of risk than other production factors whose control has long been taken for granted:
In principle (without taking into account real labor market- specific power relations), the staff themselves decide how long they stay in the company and the intensity with which they contribute positively or negatively to the production process. It evades unilateral determination by the company or its management. If one visualises this difference to all other production factors, it becomes clear that it would be downright negligent to ignore personnel risks.
Type of risks
Five basic types of personnel risks can be identified. A distinction must be made between:
- Leaving risks : employee-induced departure of high performers or employees in key positions
→ Loss of know-how , customer departures, replacement procurement costs
- Bottleneck risks : time and function- oriented capacity bottlenecks
→ Production losses , overtime , conflicts with production control
- Adaptation risks : too little willingness or ability of the employees to change
→ Loss of jobs for employees (risk to “ employability ”), deficits in the qualification structure on the part of the employer, restricted productivity due to “wrong” employees. Adjustments are also required with regard to place of work, working hours and remuneration system.
- Motivation risks : the actual capacity counted in accordance with the contractually agreed working hours ( full-time equivalent , also referred to as full-time units or personnel units) does not correspond to the actual amount of performance made available (performance reluctance)
→ Limitations in quality and quantity. But also: over-motivation: emaciation on the part of the employee up to burn-out .
- Loyalty risks : Violation of the contractual loyalty duty to serious economic crimes
→ deliberate harm to the employer (in contrast to the lack of awareness of behavior that has been changed for reasons of motivation)
Not only because legal regulations (in the future) require it ( KonTraG , Basel II ), it is an indispensable task of personnel controlling to identify risks and make them visible, to describe measures to avoid them and to check their effectiveness after implementation by management .
The scope of the risks depends on the characteristics of the company. Leaving and bottleneck risks are particularly high in small and medium-sized companies insofar as each individual loss of employees can have a stronger impact than in a company with more employees.
All personnel risks include a potential threat to the company's continued existence; Early detection is all the more important. Failure to manage personnel risk is unacceptable from the point of view of earnings and the qualitative demands of personnel work. In addition to employers, employee representatives are also called upon to eliminate personnel-induced risks in the interests of both the company and the majority of employees and to work towards the introduction of personnel risk control.
literature
- Guido Lisges, Fred Schübbe: Personnel controlling . Haufe, Freiburg 2004, ISBN 3-448-06028-3 (see chapter 13)
- Jean-Marcel Kobi: Personnel Risk Management. Gabler, 1999, ISBN 3-4091-1468-8