The HR Manager Who Led Belgian Works Councils Through 2 Successive Acquisitions

The company designs and manufactures consumer electronics under global brand licenses, and its European R&D and engineering center is located in Ghent, Belgium. Sales and commercial operations are conducted in France, Italy, and Spain. The HR function is active in all four markets from the Ghent hub, with the Ghent site carrying the most active labor relations obligations.

Belgium’s employment regime relies on collective representation in a way few other European countries can match. Works councils are powerful institutions. They are consulted on structural decisions and informed about the financial position of the business, and must be involved before any changes that will affect employment are put in place. These bodies are created following social elections on a statutory cycle. The prevention committee also has its own mandate, which is related to health and safety at the site level, and this relationship is owned by the HR Manager.

That was part of the brief. The other was direct HR coverage of sales teams in Paris, Milan, and Madrid. Three national employment systems with their own collective agreement structures, dismissal law, and working time conventions. The role required someone who could work across all four countries without an intermediary, dealing directly with local management and employee representatives in the local languages.

The brief was looking for someone who could hit the ground running in an active period of organizational change. Consolidation of entities was a possibility, and a cost-efficiency program was underway. In Belgium, the obligations to consult the works council that follow from structural change were a practical issue, not a theoretical one: the notification requirements, the timetable for information and consultation, and the renegotiation of collective agreements. The HR Manager would have needed to manage that process before.

Dutch and English were required. French was strongly preferred for the Paris relationship.

Belgium’s technology, manufacturing, and logistics companies were a natural place to start. These are the sectors with the highest density of HR professionals with active works council experience in a multi-country European scope, the combination the brief called for. Keller Executive Search was looking for professionals who had worked within a Belgian employment structure as a result of a major organizational event: an acquisition, an entity integration, or a group restructuring. You can only understand the consultation process of the works council, the cycle of social elections, and the renegotiation of the collective labor agreement when you have managed them directly. The search was all off-market.

The designated HR Manager had managed Belgian labor structures in a range of organizations with different union configurations and had led several HR functions through structural change.

He established the HR operation from scratch for a new affiliate of an international container terminal operator in Zeebrugge, handling over 100 hires across technical, logistics, and management disciplines, building out the HRIS, legal compliance, and labor relations infrastructure simultaneously. He served as acting HR Director in a clinical research laboratory in Belgium, with full strategic and operational HR responsibility for Belgian and international operations.

He was in charge of HR in a Belgian fleet management technology company with locations in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Ireland, leading the HR function through two successive acquisitions by global automotive groups. He handled the elections of the social bodies, the works council, and the syndical delegates over both transitions, renegotiated collective labor agreements, and reorganized the workforce at the time of the contraction of the automotive sector. Most recently, he led the Belgian HR function of a consumer goods group that had spun off from its parent. He managed the payroll vendor migration and kept union engagement alive while the new company was setting up independent operations.

He is a native Dutch speaker, has an advanced level of French, and is fluent in English. He holds a Master’s degree in Psychology and a graduate certificate in Corporate Economics from KU Leuven.