Heike Hausfeld is a Bayer veteran. In her almost 40 years with the company, she has experienced many a corporate crisis. But the work of the long-standing works council member has probably never been as difficult as it has been since the disastrous takeover of Monsanto. As the highest employee representative and Deputy Chairwoman of the Supervisory Board, the 58-year-old has held powerful positions since 2022, but they also entail a great deal of responsibility.

Although Hausfeld was not involved in the decision to make the largest acquisition in the company's history – she has only been a member of the Supervisory Board since 2017 – she has to bear the consequences on the front line. In autumn 2018, Bayer launched its first restructuring program, followed less than two years later by the next round of savings – both of which involved massive job cuts. In the end, however, to no avail.

"We have already gone through many rounds of adjustments. But that has not strengthened us in the long term. That is why we are now trying a new approach that is not about redistributing work, but about redesigning work," says Hausfeld, explaining why the Works Council has agreed to the new organizational model called Dynamic Shared Ownership (DSO). As part of the agreement between the Management Board and employee representatives, it was only possible to extend the exclusion of compulsory redundancies by one year until the end of 2026. However, Hausfeld does not want this to be seen as a defeat: "We are under considerable time pressure. We have to show quickly that we are moving the company forward."

Lamentations and recriminations are not her thing. Like a true Northerner, she is clear-headed and pragmatic and looks for ways out of the tricky situation. The mother of two grown-up children is convinced that it is the job of employee representatives to balance interests, especially in difficult times.

She joined Bayer directly after leaving school in 1985 as part of her training as a mathematical-technical assistant. At that time, apprenticeships in IT were few and far between, especially in the small town where she grew up. When she started at Bayer, her home town had fewer inhabitants than Bayer employed at the Leverkusen site, she recalls. After a few years at the company, Hausfeld was elected to the Works Council for the first time in 1994 and has been a full-time member since 1998.

DSO is a management model brought in by the new CEO Bill Anderson. Bayer is doing pioneering work here, as no major corporation has yet made the new organizational model a reality. The teams and ultimately each individual employee are to be given more decision-making authority so that time-consuming approval cascades can be eliminated in future and the Group will ultimately be freed from bureaucracy.

"When we started communicating about DSO in the summer, I was a little surprised by the reactions. There was a real sense of optimism," says the Head of the Works Council, reporting on the initial feedback. But of course there is also a lot of uncertainty, as DSO is once again associated with significant job cuts. There are still many employees in the Group who have spent their entire working life at Bayer, sometimes in the umpteenth generation of their family. For many, employment outside the Group is hardly conceivable.

However, Hausfeld does not want to think of herself as having a classic Bayer CV. When it becomes clear that one of her children now also works for Bayer, she finally has to laugh. Crisis or not, working for Bayer is still something special today: "I've grown together with the company," says Hausfeld, who has never felt the need to change jobs in all these years. There is no guarantee that DSO will bring the desired success. But: "Failure is not an option for me," says Hausfeld with conviction, adding: "The great thing about DSO is that it is an evolving process in which we can intervene." However, she admits that this also makes it more difficult to assess the effects. Hausfeld carefully weighs up how much insight she provides. There has been a lot of negative news recently, which worries employees, she says. At the same time, however, many are also annoyed because positive news is hardly being reported to the public.

As there is no finished target image of the future organizational structure, trust in the people involved is essential. The Works Council had been closely involved in the search for a successor to Werner Baumann. The employee representatives paid great attention to ensuring that the new CEO also took the interests of the workforce into account in the decisions, says Hausfeld.

Nevertheless, the supervisory body is not a cuddly club. "Of course, there are also controversial discussions on the Supervisory Board. But in the end we find a solution, even if it demands a lot from both sides," explains the head of the works council. This is where IG Bauen, Chemie, Energie differs from many other trade unions, which like to let things rip. Conditions like those at Thyssenkrupp, where the Chairman of the Supervisory Board recently made use of his double voting rights to enforce a decision, have not yet occurred at Bayer.

"Without the willingness to think outside the box, active participation on the Supervisory Board would not work," says Hausfeld and adds:. "As a member of the Supervisory Board, I'm not allowed to talk about many things. But that doesn't mean that I can't use the knowledge I gain."

Since Hausfeld joined the Supervisory Board, her understanding of company matters has changed. She freely admits that she used to be completely uninterested in the share price. Today, however, she knows how the view of the capital markets influences the company and its employees. However, Hausfeld by no means agrees with every investor demand. "I am firmly convinced that a broad positioning has many advantages and also offers employees more development opportunities and prospects," says the Deputy Chairwoman of the Supervisory Board, preferring to keep things brief when it comes to the sensitive issue of splitting up the company.