Works-Council Reward Harmonisation Director

The mandate

Two industrial-robotics manufacturers have combined, leaving parallel job grades, shift premiums, patent awards, sales incentives and site allowances for employees performing related work. Management wants rapid harmonisation, but employee representatives challenge role comparisons and historic commitments differ by establishment. Production ramp and scarce controls-engineering retention could be damaged by a simplistic highest-common-denominator or cost-cutting design.

The ten-week deliverable is a represented-workforce reward architecture, option set and consultation-ready evidence book. Milestone one confirms populations, agreements and decision rights in week two; milestone two completes job and element mapping in week four; milestone three develops harmonisation principles and cost ranges in week six; milestone four stress-tests workforce and payroll effects in week eight; milestone five supplies the negotiated implementation pathway.

The client will provide job descriptions, grades, pay, allowances, incentive plans, collective and works agreements, side letters, shift patterns, workforce demographics, vacancy data, payroll rules and representative-body calendars. Acceptance requires all material populations and reward elements to reconcile, at least three transition scenarios to show person and site impacts, and internal reward staff to reproduce sample placement and cost calculations.

The engagement excludes giving labour-law advice, conducting formal co-determination, negotiating collective terms, making individual pay decisions, changing employment contracts or configuring payroll. Counsel and authorised employer representatives own legal interpretations and consultation. Consultants may prepare fact bases and options, but cannot describe an unagreed design as implementable or communicate it directly to employees.

Outputs will preserve acquired rights, role evidence, scarce-skill considerations, protected characteristics, pay-equity effects, cost, employee-relations risk and required approvals. A changed merger perimeter, full payroll implementation or extended negotiation after week ten falls outside this scope. The steering group accepts the work only after a representative sample is re-performed and limitations are recorded.

Why this is external work

Each legacy reward team is invested in its own architecture, and integration leaders face pressure for a quick visible answer. The problem requires specialist job-comparison, represented-workforce and transition-design capability under strict confidentiality. External neutrality can create a common fact base without usurping counsel, management negotiators or employee representatives.

What you will own

• Reconcile employee populations, establishments, agreements, grades and every recurring or contingent reward element.
• Compare roles through accountabilities, skill, problem complexity, working conditions and labour-market scarcity rather than titles.
• Identify acquired promises, collective dependencies, representative rights and payroll constraints requiring specialist confirmation.
• Design converge, protect, freeze, grandfather and phased-transition options with person, site and demographic impacts.
• Quantify pay-equity, retention, employee-relations, production and cost consequences under each harmonisation pathway.
• Prepare consultation-ready evidence, questions, management boundaries and decision logs without conducting formal negotiation.
• Deliver architecture principles, audited placement method, transition scenarios, cost model, risk register and site-specific implementation sequence.

Candidate qualifications

• Led merger reward harmonisation across German works-council environments and multiple European manufacturing sites.
• Compared technical, production, commercial and support roles using defensible job evidence rather than inherited titles.
• Designed transition treatments for grades, bonuses, shift premiums, allowances and individual protected promises.
• Quantified pay equity, retention, payroll and workforce-relations consequences before management selected a pathway.
• Worked effectively with employee representatives and labour counsel without claiming negotiation or legal authority.
• Left internal reward teams able to reproduce placements, costs and exceptions using controlled source material.

Non-negotiables

• Can complete four German or Czech plant and representative workshops inside the ten-week schedule.
• Will disclose employer, union, works-council, law-firm, reward-vendor and competing-manufacturer relationships.
• Brings represented-workforce reward harmonisation after merger; broad C&B benchmarking alone is insufficient.
• Accepts no authority to interpret law, negotiate agreements, alter contracts, set individual pay or configure payroll.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe a merger reward element you did not harmonise because role or agreement evidence differed materially.
2. 49 words maximum. How would you compare two production roles whose legacy titles and premiums are incompatible?
3. 49 words maximum. Which client inputs must be validated before representative-body consultation begins?