In an effort to improve oversight at the Volkswagen Group, Hans Dieter Poetsch stated that the company is planning to start rotating its key staff, sort of like a game of musical chairs. The supervisory board chairman of VW AG stated that such a move was important in order to implement better supervision over their operations.
Speaking to Welt am Sonntag, Poetsch said, “we are planning a rotation principle for certain functions. The employees concerned will spend only a limited time in certain positions before moving on.”
“We will bolster checks, determine responsibilities in a clearer way and better implement technical supervision of procedures,” he added. This “four-eyes principle” where at least two people are involved in key duties (future engine software) would become a company norm.
However, Poetsch admits that the job rotations would prove to be more challenging when it comes to more complex roles. Volkswagen could draw upon the expertise of staff across the group to circumvent this potential shortcoming, he claims.
“It’s easier said than done. There are few employees that are able to programme an engine control unit. But we have these people across the different brands. For example, experts at Audi could switch to Porsche and from Porsche to VW and so on,” Poetsch said.
The Volkswagen Group has been hit by a series of scandals over the past few months, first over “dieselgate” where the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that certain diesel models were equipped with “defeat devices” used to circumvent tough federal emissions testing. In a separate incident, it was revealed that engineers doctored in-house fuel economy and CO2 emissions tests in Europe to hit internal targets.
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