Only 24 percent of German personnel managers expect a points system for immigrants based on the Canadian model to have positive effects on employment in their company. By contrast, 74 percent expect the system to have no employment effect, according to the results of the latest Randstad ifo Personnel Manager Survey. 3 percent expect such a system to have a negative impact. Personnel managers in large companies are particularly open to the scheme, and 30 percent expect it to have positive effects. At the same time, personnel managers called for a dismantling of the bureaucratic hurdles to recruiting refugees and migrants, as well as faster guarantees relating to work permits.
A good third of the personnel managers surveyed expect flexible full-time work with the option of increasing weekly working hours by up to ten hours, or reducing those hours for employees with children or dependents, or workers completing training to have positive effects on their staff base. Half of survey participants expect its effects to be neutral, while 15 percent expect negative effects.
If a right to part-time employment were to be introduced, personnel managers see more opportunities than risks on the whole. While 34 percent expect employment to grow as a result, only 21 percent foresee negative effects. 32 percent of the personnel managers surveyed expect a right to return to full-time employment (for the number of hours originally contractually agreed and in an equivalent position) to have negative effects on their staff base, while only 12 percent expect positive employment effects.
Personnel managers are relaxed when it comes to the employment effect of new legislation on transparency in compensation, which gives employees the right to receive information on the earnings of colleagues in a comparable position as of 2018. 80 percent of personnel managers expect it to have no employment effects. 17 percent expect staff cutbacks, while 3 percent believe that their staff bases will expand as a result.
If unfounded fixed-term contracts were to be eliminated, 27 percent of personnel managers believe that their staff base would shrink. 15 percent, by contrast, expect a positive employment effect, but the share of firms that expect it to have no impact on employment is relatively high at 58 percent.
The proposal to eliminate the obligatory eleven hour resting period between two shifts seems to be less significant: 78 percent of personnel managers expect it to be of little importance, 16 percent think it will have a positive effect while 7 percent believe that it will have a negative impact.