Labour and Employee Relations Lead (f/m/d) DACH region

Wondering what’s within Danaher? Take a closer look.

Danaher is a leading global life sciences and diagnostics innovator committed to accelerating the power of science and technology to improve human health.  We are a $24 billion company with 16 operating companies and a combined total workforce of 66,000 associates worldwide.

Look again and you’ll see the opportunity to build a meaningful career, be creative, and take risks with the support you need to be successful. You’ll find associates who are as certain about their impact as they are about where they’re headed next. You’ll find the Danaher Business System, which makes everything possible. You’ll also see a company that investors trust—our culture of continuous improvement has helped us outperform the S&P 500 by more than 5,000% over the past 25 years.

And no matter where you look at Danaher, at the heart of what we do, you’ll witness our shared purpose—helping realize life’s potential—in action. Whether we’re supporting a life-saving vaccine development or advancing a new instrument for cancer diagnosis our work helps improve millions of lives.

We hope you’ll see yourself here, too. What you find at Danaher—and within yourself— might just change the world.

Danaher has a matrixed and decentralized organizational structure. With a significant presence in Europe, Danaher’s 16 operating companies (OpCos) present a wide breadth of employee representative forums, including 50+ works councils across Europe.  Germany in particular presents a large associate population with various levels of employee representative relationships, including a German working group with representatives from the many operating companies).

Danaher is building a global Labor & Employee Relations function which includes a Center of Excellence (LER COE) service model which provides core labour and employee relations services to its operating companies.  For this LER CoE we are looking for the Labour and Employee Relations Lead (f/m/d) for DACH is responsible for driving and supporting execution of Danaher’s labour and employee relations strategies in the DACH sub-region. 

This position is a member of the of the Danaher Corporate HR Labour and Employee Relations (LER) EU team and will be located in Germany covering Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The amount of travel will be around 20%.

In this role, you will: 

• Develop trust and collaborative relationships with HRBPs who manage employee representative relationships (including trade unions and Works Councils) in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. 
• Partner with Danaher’s German Working Group Liaison to maintain and leverage a positive and effective relationship to drive enterprise-wide program and system deployments and provide leadership on enterprise initiatives and projects, including as to associate representative information and consultation requirements.
• Prepare and review local factory agreements to drive consistency and compliance with LER strategy on enterprise initiatives and provide mentorship, guidance and advice on works council/union/labour relations matters as appropriate, including establishing and/or maintaining and grooming constructive and business-oriented partnerships with employee representatives.
• Handle non-routine core employee relations matters in partnership with OpCo HR business partners that present complexity or higher risk or require policy interpretation, including workplace investigations (and determination of root cause, development and recommendation of countermeasures as applicable), leave accommodation issues, termination matters both individual and mass layoffs, and performance management issues
• Support OpCo HR Business Partners (HRBPs)/HR Generalists on routine core ER processes including workplace investigations, performance management issues, associate employment separations (individual and mass dismissals), and performance management issues.

The essential requirements of the job include:  

• University degree (undergraduate degree required, graduate degree preferred) in Law (Labour/Industrial relations), Labour Relations, Business, Human Resources, or another related field.
• 10+ years of combined human resources, employee relations, labor relations, and/or L&E legal experience in a law firm or company.
• Subject matter expertise and solid technical knowledge of fundamental labour and employment laws and labour and employee relations landscape in Germany (Austria, Switzerland Europe generally would be a plus)
• Must be able to apply LER expertise and experience with a pragmatic and proactive approach, balance collaborative workplace partnerships and business interests, and influence and lead stakeholders.
• Excellent written and oral and presentation skills (English required plus