SAP staff morale plunges in internal survey amid restructuring

SAP SE is facing swelling discontent among employees in its home market, according to an internal survey, as CEO Christian Klein pushes through a restructuring plan announced in January. 

The percentage of German employees with "full trust" in the software company's executive board fell to 38%, the lowest in at least three years, according to an annual survey. The poll was taken in June and presented on Thursday at a general meeting of the works council at SAP, Germany's most valuable company. 

Read more:  Purpose driving workers' passion: Mundane work could be impacting employee morale

The poll highlights a growing divergence between SAP's share price, which has surged to a record high this year, and staff sentiment at a time when the company plans to cut or retrain as many as 10,000 employees. Just 15% of SAP workers said reorganizations have improved their working conditions in the past 12 months. 

Klein announced the restructuring plan as part of a push to integrate artificial intelligence into SAP software to help enterprise clients become more efficient. Among German employees, 70% said they approve of the company's strategy, down 2 percentage points from the previous survey. 

"Employees signaled their strong approval of this transformation," SAP spokesperson Marcus Winkler said in a statement to Bloomberg. The poll "showed employee engagement and trust in the board as areas for improvement," he added.

Read more:  Excellence in advising: Lester Morales puts people before profits

SAP's shares rose 1.3% on Thursday to €204.50 in Frankfurt. The stock is up 47% so far this year. 

The results of the survey were presented at SAP's headquarters in Walldorf during a general meeting of the works council, which is a group of elected employees who represent the company's workforce for the German SE entity, to discuss the restructuring. 

It was conducted before several departures from SAP's board. Chief marketing officer Julia White and chief revenue officer Scott Russell left the company in August. Chief technology officer Jürgen Müller will depart at the end of the month and faces a criminal probe from German prosecutors over inappropriate conduct.

Read more:  Pet-friendly policies are an office morale booster

SAP is also facing a civil investigation in the U.S., its biggest market. The Justice Department is looking into whether the company illegally conspired with product reseller Carahsoft Technology to fix prices on sales to the U.S. military, Bloomberg News reported this week, citing court documents. 

SAP has cooperated with the civil investigation "since the beginning," spokesperson Daniel Reinhardt said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.

Increasing competition

Confidence in the executive board fell from 50% during the previous survey, which was conducted in October. The Technology and Innovation division, which is responsible for the platform that unifies SAP products, had the lowest confidence in the board, with 31% of the unit fully backing it.

The survey of 16,500 participating employees found that 51% of the German workforce would accept a similarly paid position at a competitor. SAP's German SE unit employs about 20,000 people, or about one in five of the firm's workers globally.

Germany's tech workers are in greater demand than ever. There were a record 149,000 vacancies for IT experts at German companies at the end of 2023, according to a study by industry group Bitkom. Only 2% of companies said there were enough specialists on the market, compared to 8% a year earlier, the study found.