The Managers at around one in three companies in the mechanical and plant engineering sector are unsure whether all relevant regulations are being implemented and whether their companies are fully compliant with the law. The reason: a flood of new regulations has made it increasingly difficult for the employees responsible in companies to keep track of the scope of the regulations they have to comply with – from identification and understanding to application. This was the result of a survey published in the chartbook "How companies in the plant and machinery engineering sector deal with bureaucracy".
"Companies benefit from bureaucracy because it ensures legal and planning security. However, the complexity of bureaucratic requirements and the resulting psychological, opportunity and indirect follow-up costs have now reached a level that companies can no longer cope with – and no longer want to", reports Dr Annette Icks, who has been investigating the bureaucratic burden on companies with her team since many years. Instead of individual measures, she believes that a paradigm shift is now needed – away from the idea of control and towards more trust, practicality, meaningfulness and proportionality in legislation. About implementation, politicians in Germany could take their cue from countries such as the Netherlands or the United Kingdom.
