In almost all German companies, the employment law function is located in the HR department and not in the legal department. One of the reasons is the proximity to the HR department. This gives the employment lawyers an advantage over the legal department: Integration into the specialist department enables very close cooperation.
However, legal departments already seem to be further ahead than the employment law function when it comes to digitalization and automation. There is still potential here for the employment law function in many companies. In many cases, the company already has technologies that could also be used by internal labor lawyers. In principle, the employment law function should evaluate its performance and costs as transparently as possible using KPIs and use the results to determine where efficiency can be increased through standardization and automation.
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