“The qualification of external personnel is a real area of tension.”
In an increasingly complex and dynamic business world, companies are faced with the challenge of keeping their employees up to date with the latest legal requirements. The list of requirements to be met is constantly growing:
- Technical requirements within the scope of internal and external audits
- Compliance issues such as codes of conduct and corruption prevention
- Legal regulations such as the General Equal Treatment Act (AGG)
- New EU regulations such as the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) for the financial and IT sectors
These regulations require more than just theoretical knowledge—they require verifiable qualifications, often with individual content, company-specific guidelines, and time-critical deadlines. While internal employees in most companies are trained efficiently and in compliance with legal requirements through established systems and processes, the situation is often very different for external employees. Freelancers, service providers, and temporary workers change regularly, which increases the complexity of qualification management.
However, many companies are faced with an organizational balancing act: they have to meet the above requirements but do not have suitable systems in place to implement them for external target groups. Manual processes, unclear responsibilities, and a lack of evidence are often the result. Let's talk about solutions!
The interview was conducted by RKW BW with Harald Weingartner, managing partner of the tts Group.
The qualification of external personnel? A challenge
What problems or needs do you see that you want to solve with xLMS – the business process outsourcing service for qualification?
From my many years of working with national and international companies, I know that the qualification of external employees is a real challenge for many companies. While internal training is usually provided through established systems, the necessary structure is often lacking for external employees. HR and specialist departments are regularly under pressure, especially when it comes to short-term assignments, which often have little lead time and unclear data. This is not just a matter of organizational hurdles, but also of legal certainty: qualifications relevant to audits or compliance must be verifiably completed before work can begin.
It becomes particularly challenging when external employees cannot be managed in the HR system – for example, for data protection reasons or to avoid the risk of bogus self-employment. At the same time, this group of people is often very heterogeneous in terms of language, origin, purpose of assignment, and duration, which makes standardized processing all the more difficult. Added to this are incomplete master data, unclear responsibilities between HR and specialist departments, and the lack of a technical platform to manage these processes efficiently. External employees are often deployed decentrally in different departments – without an overarching process or central solution to manage and qualify these groups in a structured manner. That's why we developed xLMS – to tackle precisely these challenges for our customers. A cloud-based learning management system and service developed specifically for external target groups. The basic idea: to qualify external personnel without integrating them into internal HR systems. And to do so with the same standards of professionalism, controllability, and verifiability as in the internal area.
Question: How does xLMS ensure compliance?
Compliance example: DORA
How do companies benefit from your solution in concrete terms?
The xLMS service not only relieves HR departments, but also other departments that regularly work with external staff—whether in production, field service, maintenance, or logistics. Clear processes, automated qualifications, and audit-proof documentation significantly reduce the effort involved while ensuring compliance.
At its core, it is a classic “make-or-buy” decision: if the company wants to manage the qualification of external employees itself – whether through HR, purchasing, or the specialist departments – the question of scalability and process reliability inevitably arises: Are there sufficient resources and clear responsibilities to perform this task consistently and in an audit-proof manner? Which digital solution should be used, and is there a risk of bogus self-employment?
Or do you consciously decide to purchase a specialized service – and thus outsource irregular, time-consuming, and often unpopular tasks such as monthly checks, documentation, and escalation of missing qualification certificates to an experienced external service provider who specializes in this area? xLMS offers exactly this relief – flexible, scalable, and compliance-secure.
It doesn't have to be complicated, but it needs to be consistent.
Question: How can qualification be approached in a structured manner?
What advice would you give to companies that have not yet taken a structured approach to external qualification?
In my view, it is helpful to first get a detailed overview: Where are external employees used, what qualifications are necessary, and how is this currently being handled? This often quickly reveals where gaps exist or where processes are reaching their limits. And many are very surprised at how many external employees are working in which areas of the company.
It is important to find a way that works in everyday life, but also holds up in serious situations, such as audits or compliance checks. It doesn't have to be complicated, but it does need a clear line. External support can be useful here, but it must always fit your organization.
This article was first published on May 9, 2025, on RKW BW.
