While Germany’s Minister of Social Affairs and Employment, Andrea Nahles (SPD) is doing her utmost, albeit currently with little success, to introduce legislation giving workers working on a part-time basis the right to return to full-time work, SAP, the German multinational and global leader in enterprise software has taken the initiative and as of 01 April the 19,000 employees in its German offices can scale back their working time for a fixed time period (running from 1 to 36 months) at the end of which they can go back to full-time work. With this move SAP is looking to respond to a demand by its employees for customized working hours and in this way it can also boost its image as an employer.
Work satisfaction- a performance factor. At SAP’s head office in the small town of Waldorff in north Baden-Wurttemberg, one of the Germany richest districts, the company has been trying for years to better take its employees’ wishes into account. The importance of employee satisfaction is “part of the company’s DNA”. This approach is also economics oriented. “We set up an employee satisfaction index called the Employee Engagement Index, (EEI), explained Angela Todisco, head of HR at SAP headquarters.
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