The Berlin employer market, seen from HR
Berlin is the centre of the German start-up and scale-up economy, and it does not look like the rest of the country. English is the working language in a large share of technology companies, founders and leadership teams come from everywhere, and a company can go from 30 to 300 people in three years on venture funding. It also has a large public sector, a growing consulting and agency scene, the corporate innovation labs of the big German groups, and, around Adlershof and in Brandenburg, an industrial and research base that is easy to forget from Mitte.
For HR, the scale-up pattern creates a specific problem. HR structures are built late, typically only when the company already has well over a hundred employees, an office manager who has been doing contracts on the side, and a first wave of conflicts that nobody was trained to handle. The German legal framework, however, does not scale late. The Protection Against Dismissal Act applies from eleven employees, the works council can be elected from five, and a company of 150 people that has never had a proper HR function is operating with exposure it has not measured.
The market for experienced HR leads is correspondingly tight. Scale-ups, the German entities of American and British tech groups, the public sector, and a growing Mittelstand all compete for the same people, and the search for a permanent Head of People in Berlin routinely takes longer than six months. For a company in the middle of a funding round, a merger, or a reduction in force, six months is a long time to run HR without anyone accountable for it.
Typical HR situations in Berlin mandates
After the funding round
Series B closed, headcount plan says 90 new hires in twelve months, HR is one person. Hiring machinery, compensation bands, contracts that hold, an HRIS, and the first works council conversation, all at once.
After the down round
Runway shortened, 20 percent of roles to go. Selection criteria that survive court, works council consultation, mass dismissal notification if thresholds are met, severance logic, and a team that has to keep working afterwards.
The works council was just elected
Often in response to exactly the situations above. Founders who have never worked with co-determination need someone who knows what the council may and may not demand, and who builds the relationship in the first year.
What is different from Frankfurt or Munich is the speed and the culture. A Berlin scale-up decides in a week what an industrial company in Stuttgart decides in a quarter, and it expects HR to keep pace. At the same time, the legal steps take exactly as long as they take everywhere in Germany: a works council hearing before a dismissal is a week, a mass dismissal notification triggers a waiting period, and a works council agreement on an HR system takes months. An interim HR manager in Berlin spends much of the first month explaining which of those clocks cannot be sped up, and then making sure everything else moves fast.
Hybrid from Frankfurt: how it works
Frankfurt to Berlin Hauptbahnhof is around four hours by ICE, with departures every hour. The practical model for a Berlin mandate is a fixed Monday and Tuesday on-site, with the outbound train early Monday morning and the return on Tuesday evening, and Wednesday to Friday remote. The two days are consecutive so that one hotel night covers them and so that the meetings that need physical presence, works council sessions, leadership meetings, difficult individual conversations, can all be scheduled into a known window.
In the first two weeks of a mandate I am in Berlin every working day, because taking stock of open cases, deadlines, contracts, and relationships does not work remotely. During works council negotiations, a restructuring, or a merger integration, the on-site share goes up temporarily to three or four days. In quieter phases of a long vacancy cover, it can drop to one day plus a second one every other week. The rhythm is agreed at the start and changed only by agreement, never by a calendar accident. Travel and accommodation are arranged as a flat amount in the services contract so that the managing director sees one predictable line, not a stack of receipts.
For companies with distributed teams and no real office, which are common in Berlin, the fully remote model is the alternative. That page is Interim HR remote across DACH.
A typical week in a Berlin mandate
Early ICE, in the office by ten. Leadership meeting, works council session if scheduled, the individual conversations that need a room and a door.
HR team check-in, hiring manager meetings, interviews with candidates who should meet me in person, handover notes. Evening train back.
Contracts, policies, HRIS configuration, candidate pipeline, calls with the group's people team abroad, works council paperwork.
One-page report to the managing director: done, open, decisions needed. Next week's on-site agenda agreed so that the right people are in the room on Monday.
Works council culture in Berlin, and what it means for founders
The works council (Betriebsrat) is the elected employee body that German law allows in any establishment with five or more permanent employees. In established industrial regions, works councils are decades old and follow well-worn procedures. In Berlin, a large share of works councils in the technology sector are under five years old and were elected in a specific moment: a wave of dismissals, a return-to-office mandate, an acquisition. That origin shapes the relationship. The council is often sceptical, energetic, and well connected to the union, and the founders on the other side have often never sat in a co-determination meeting in their lives.
For an international leadership team the essential facts are these. Under Section 87 of the Works Constitution Act (BetrVG), the works council has a consent right on working time arrangements, on pay structures such as bonus schemes, and on any technical system capable of monitoring employees, which covers the HRIS, time tracking, and AI tools. Under Section 102, every dismissal needs a prior hearing, and a dismissal without one is void. Under Sections 111 and 112, a reduction in force above certain thresholds requires negotiation of a reconciliation of interests and a social plan. None of this can be waived by company policy or by an employment contract drafted in London.
In my Berlin mandates the works council meets me in the first on-site week, before any hearing is due. Meetings run in German, minutes are shared, and the founders get a briefing afterwards in English on what was agreed and what the council may still ask for. That routine, more than any single negotiation, is what turns a new and wary works council into a working relationship by month six. What a full mandate looks like from first call to handover is on the role page Interim HR Manager; the restructuring case in detail is under Restructuring and Social Plan.
Restructuring in a software scale-up carried out in full compliance with employment law and co-determination; HR structures built in growth companies across twelve countries. More about me
Frequently asked questions about Berlin
Do you work only remotely for Berlin companies?
No. Berlin mandates run hybrid: two fixed on-site days a week as the standard, more in the first two weeks and during works council negotiations, the rest remote. The on-site days are agreed at the start and kept, so that the team and the works council can plan around them.
How do you get to Berlin, and who pays for it?
By ICE from Frankfurt, about four hours each way, usually Monday morning out and Tuesday evening back. Travel and accommodation for the fixed days are agreed in the services contract as a flat arrangement. No surprises on the invoice.
Our scale-up has no HR structure yet, just an office manager doing contracts. Is that a case for interim?
It is the most common Berlin case. Between 80 and 150 people, HR has to become a function: contracts that hold, a compensation logic, a works council relationship, an HRIS. An interim HR manager builds that in six to nine months and hands over to the first permanent Head of People.
We just had layoffs after a down round. What does an interim HR manager do in that situation?
Run the process so that it is legally clean and humane at the same time: selection criteria that survive a labour court, works council consultation where one exists, mass dismissal notification to the employment agency if the thresholds are met, individual conversations, and then stabilise the remaining team. Details under Restructuring and Social Plan.
Do you have experience with Berlin-style works councils that were elected during a crisis?
Yes, from scale-ups where the works council was elected in reaction to growth pains or a restructuring. The first year of that relationship needs more presence and more patience than an established council in an industrial company. Fixed on-site days are part of how that trust gets built.
Does the group's US or UK HR team stay involved?
Usually yes, and that works well. I report to the local managing director and coordinate with the group's people team on templates, systems, and compensation frameworks, while handling everything that is specifically German locally. Group calls run in English, works council meetings in German.