The head of human resources at SAP is leaving the technology company.
(Photo: Andy Ridder for Handelsblatt)
Dusseldorf So far, Sabine Bendiek has had a demanding dual role on the SAP Executive Board: As Human Resources Director and Chief Operating Officer (COO), the 56-year-old manager is responsible for bringing about the changes required by the new strategy at the software manufacturer with its more than 110,000 employees.
However, changes are soon to come at Bendiek herself: According to information from the Handelsblatt, she will be leaving SAP at the turn of the year after only three years in office. According to corporate circles, she herself does not want to extend the contract with the software manufacturer. The “Manager Magazin” had first reported on the personnel.
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Internally there had been some criticism of Bendiek. The long-time boss of Microsoft Germany has a lot of experience with setting up a software manufacturer for the cloud age, but is not a human resources manager. In this area, she gives little impetus and sometimes does not seem well informed, according to employee circles – most recently when it comes to job cuts.
With her profile, Bendiek actually seemed a perfect match for SAP, having made a career at the interface between technology and business. She studied business administration and earned a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She has worked at the consultancies McKinsey and Booz Allen as well as venture investor Early Bird.
And she has proven herself in various IT companies: Siemens Nixdorf, Dell, EMC, and finally Microsoft, where she took over the management of the German national company at the beginning of 2016. At the software manufacturer, she successfully aligned the organization to the business with cloud services.
Difficult change to cloud company
With this work, Bendiek recommended herself for SAP, where she started as Human Resources Director at the beginning of 2021, and after an induction phase also as COO.
According to corporate circles, this position was a condition for the change – this is an important task, especially for the software manufacturer, who organizes business processes with its programs.
At the time, SAP and Bendiek justified the dual role by saying that the realignment of the organization depends on people as well as processes – which is why it makes sense to bundle responsibility for both areas in one board area.
Similar to Microsoft a few years ago, SAP is in a “transformation”, as they always say internally. The group, which grew up selling software licenses, wants to become a “cloud company” – this requires different know-how, different sales processes, in short: a different culture.
In everyday life, however, Bendiek’s work as Chief Operating Officer predominates, according to corporate circles. The manager, who likes to emphasize her talent for delegating, has given up many tasks in human resources. During the current restructuring, in which 3,000 jobs are being cut, critics report that she appeared uninformed on important issues.
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