Ending an interim HR assignment in Germany: how to secure the handover to your successor and what continues after the last day

How does an interim assignment end legally, and which notice period applies?

It depends on how the assignment was agreed. An interim assignment is normally a service contract, not an employment contract. If it is fixed-term, it ends when the agreed time has passed (section 620(1) of the German Civil Code, BGB). No notice is needed, and notice is not simply available either: ordinary termination under sections 621 to 623 BGB is meant for cases where the duration is neither fixed nor derivable from the purpose of the services (section 620(2) BGB). To end a fixed-term assignment early you need a clause in the contract, a termination agreement or good cause.

Without an agreed duration, the notice period follows the period by which the fee is measured (section 621 BGB). Where the fee is measured by months, notice is permitted at the latest on the 15th of a month for the end of the calendar month. Where it is measured by quarters, a six-week period to the end of the quarter applies. If the fee is not measured by periods, notice is possible at any time, or with two weeks' notice where the engagement takes up the person's working capacity wholly or mainly. These periods apply unless the contract says otherwise, so read it first.

Two routes need no period. Termination for good cause requires that continuing until the end of the period or the agreed end cannot reasonably be expected, and it is possible only within two weeks of learning the relevant facts (section 626 BGB). Termination based on special trust without good cause (section 627 BGB) covers services of a higher kind assigned because of special trust, but not where the person is in a lasting service relationship with fixed pay. Whether an assignment with regular fees falls under that exception is a question for the individual case.

Two consequences matter. On immediate termination the person can claim the fee for services rendered so far (section 628 BGB), and the fee falls due after each period has elapsed (section 614 BGB). A final invoice at the end of the assignment is therefore normal. And the notice period is handover time. If you shorten it by cutting access before the successor has been briefed, you save an invoice and lose the handover.

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What belongs in the handover file for your successor?

Everything your successor needs on the first day and only the interim manager knows. A handover file is not a closing report on what was done. It answers the questions of the person who sits down at the desk on Monday: what is running, what is due, what have I been promised, where is it, and what do I need to watch? The law does not require one, but in practice it separates a handover from a fresh start.

The core is open matters with a deadline and a contact: ongoing procedures and talks with the works council, open hires and separations, promised measures, running contracts with providers and systems, deadlines through the year. Add what no system holds: who is difficult to work with, which promise was made verbally, which decision was left open on purpose and why. An assignment over months produces decisions justified only in the interim manager's head. Those reasons belong on paper.

Do not put the file at the end. Start it in the first week and update it weekly, ideally as a shared document the managing director reads along. How to limit the interim manager's access to what is needed from the start is covered in the article on access to employee data. Access that was never granted too widely does not have to be recovered at the end.

Plan the briefing as an overlap. The most effective handover is one where the successor runs alongside for two to four weeks, holds the first talks with the works council and providers together with the interim manager and works through the deadlines once under guidance. Where no successor is set, hand over to a named person in the company, not to a mailbox. Nobody can overlap without knowing the end of the assignment: the end date belongs in the managing director's calendar when the assignment starts.

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Which duties continue after the last day?

Four: return of property, confidentiality, data protection and the reference. The assignment ends, but some duties arising from it do not. The contract says which, and what it omits the law replaces only in part. That is why the end of the assignment belongs in the contract before the assignment begins.

The law regulates return where the assignment is an agency-type engagement: whoever is commissioned must hand over what was received to carry out the task and what was obtained from the business (section 667 BGB), and those rules also apply to paid service contracts involving such business management (section 675(1) BGB). Whether your assignment falls under that depends on how it is set up. Write the return in explicitly: devices, access tokens, documents and copies.

Confidentiality has two sides. The law protects information as a trade secret only if it is subject to secrecy measures that are reasonable in the circumstances (section 2 no. 1 GeschGehG). A contractual confidentiality duty and withdrawn access are such measures. Anyone who breaches a duty not to disclose or use a trade secret acts unlawfully (section 4(2) GeschGehG). Without a duty and without access control you have a problem of proof if something leaks later.

For data protection the standard stays what it was during the assignment. Anyone with access to personal data may process it only on the controller's instructions (Art. 32(4) GDPR, Art. 29 GDPR). Personal data may be kept in identifiable form only as long as necessary for the purposes (Art. 5(1)(e) GDPR). In practice: local copies, exports and private storage of the interim manager are returned or deleted at the end, and you have that confirmed in writing. Where processing on your behalf applies in the individual case, Art. 28(3)(g) GDPR requires that all data be deleted or returned at the controller's choice, unless a storage duty exists.

The reference is the fourth duty and the one most often forgotten. When a lasting service relationship ends, the person providing the services can demand a written reference on the relationship and its duration, and on request on performance and conduct (section 630 BGB). For employees, section 109 of the Trade Regulation Code (GewO) applies instead. Settle early who signs off such a document, and keep it factual and verifiable.

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How do you take back access, data and authority?

With a list you began on the first day of the assignment, in order of risk. At the end the order is the same as for any departure: first rights that allow data export or payments, then read access, last the mailbox and directories. The interim manager's mailbox stays reachable for a while as a collection point for queries before it is closed. Note date and person for each withdrawal so you can later show when what ended.

Authority needs a line of its own. A granted commercial power of attorney (Prokura) can be revoked at any time regardless of the underlying legal relationship, without prejudice to the contractual fee (section 52(1) of the German Commercial Code, HGB). Its expiry must be registered with the commercial register (section 53(2) HGB). If you gave the interim manager bank authority, portal access for tax or social security procedures or signing rights toward providers, these also belong on your list for the last day. How this works after a sudden departure is described in the article on covering a vacant head of HR.

The systems themselves decide how much manual work the end of the assignment costs. Whether an account can be blocked centrally depends on whether the application offers a link to a central login procedure (single sign-on), and which contract documents the vendor publishes decides how quickly you clarify responsibilities and sub-processors. I evaluated the dataset I keep on HR software. Of 137 systems in the areas HR core system, recruiting and employee experience, 37 state a single sign-on link, 46 state a template for the data processing agreement, 33 of them publicly, and 44 publish a list of their sub-processors. For most systems these details were not found. So check in each system the interim manager administered how access ends.

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How long must records from the assignment be kept?

Eight years for invoices and other accounting vouchers, ten years for annual accounts and books, six years for other commercial and business letters. The Commercial Code and the Fiscal Code give the same periods: accounting vouchers eight years, books, annual accounts and the organisational documents needed to understand them ten years, and other documents six years (section 257(4) HGB, section 147(3) AO). The period starts at the end of the calendar year in which the voucher arose or the letter was received or sent (section 257(5) HGB, section 147(4) AO).

For the assignment this means: the interim manager's invoices are accounting vouchers. The contract and the correspondence are commercial letters insofar as they concern a commercial transaction (section 257(2) HGB) and are therefore kept for six years. What the interim manager set up in the HR department for you follows the periods for the respective process, such as the payroll account: it is to be kept until the end of the sixth calendar year following the last entry of a wage payment (section 41(1) sentence 9 EStG, the Income Tax Act).

That is why the handover file should contain a filing plan. What you must keep cannot sit in a mailbox that is deleted with the interim manager's account. And what you no longer need you may not keep without reason once the periods have expired (Art. 5(1)(e) GDPR). At the end of the assignment, decide where the records are, who manages them and when they are deleted.

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Whom do you inform when the assignment ends or is extended?

First the works council, if there is one. The works council must be informed also about persons who are not in an employment relationship with the employer, including in particular the scope of time, the place of work and the tasks of those persons (section 80(2) sentence 1 of the Works Constitution Act, BetrVG). If the assignment ends earlier or is extended, one of these details changes. Inform the works council in good time, not after the decision.

Then employees and outside contacts: employees who held conversations with the interim manager need the successor as contact. Providers, authorities with a contact on file and your tax adviser should also get a name. A short notice with date, names and responsibilities is enough and stops mail going to an address nobody reads any more.

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Extend, hire or hand over: what comes after the interim?

It depends on whether the need was a project or a permanent one. There are four routes, and each has its own risk. Extension is the most convenient, handover to a permanent hire the cleanest, a fractional arrangement the middle way for lasting need below a full-time role, and an internal successor the cheapest if someone in the company is ready.

An extension needs one thought about status. Employment is dependent work, and indications are work under instructions and integration into the work organisation of the person giving the instructions (section 7(1) SGB IV, the Social Code IV). The decision follows an overall assessment of all circumstances of the individual case (section 7a(2) SGB IV). The longer an assignment runs and the closer the person is tied into your processes, the more of these indications can arise. A status determination procedure with the German pension insurance can be run in advance, is free of charge and takes three months on average according to the pension insurance. How to cut the assignment from the start so that it stays self-employed is covered in the German-language article on false self-employment of interim managers.

If you want lasting support after the assignment without filling a full-time role, fractional HR is the form that takes over on fixed days per week. The comparison of the models is on the page interim, fractional or permanent hire. Decide before the end date, not after: an extension discussed only on the last day is no longer a mandate but an emergency.

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What should you settle in the last four weeks?

In week one you decide on extension or successor, in week two you brief, in week three you withdraw access, in week four you close. The order follows dependency: without a decision no briefing, without a briefing no access withdrawal, without a withdrawal no clean end.

Week one belongs to the decision and the date. Fix the end date in the calendar, inform the works council about duration and successor and decide whether to extend, hire or hand over. Weeks two and three belong to the successor: joint conversations, joint deadlines, the handover file as working basis. In the last week access is withdrawn, devices returned, copies deleted or returned, authority revoked and the final invoice checked.

The list below summarises this. Tick what you have settled. The state stays saved in your browser, and the button below copies it as text.

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When you do not need me for the handover

I ask first who can carry the handover. If the managing director has a named successor in the company, a clear contract and a person who maintains the handover file, you need no outside support for it, and I will tell you so in the first call. A handover is a craft, not a project.

It is different when the gap is larger than the task it leaves: when nobody in the company can judge the technical questions, the works council is involved in running procedures or the successor will not be settled for months. Then an interim HR manager or a fractional arrangement is the form that ends one assignment cleanly and starts the next one cleanly.

My most important advice applies whomever you hire: write the end date into the managing director's calendar on the day the contract is signed and start the handover file in the first week. After that the end of the assignment is an appointment, not a surprise.

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