Sense out of uncertainty, HR without borders
FedEE: The World’s leading organisation for multinational employers.
Successful employers belong to FedEE because we provide the kind of fast, high quality service that gives HR professionals in multinational organisations the special edge they require to stay ahead of events. An illustration of this is the fact that we have predicted not only 9/11, the 2007/8 meltdown, the Brexit result, but also the pandemic – six months before it happened. Furthermore, our Members jointly command assets that are larger than China’s annual GDP and three times the worth of the US Federal government. One FedEE Member put the way we make a difference this way:
“I do not have the time to brief outsiders and start worrying about professional fees before I can get a job done. I just need someone I can trust who will give me an honest second opinion and help me sort things out so that I can move onto other things. My company cannot carry all the expertise about international HR laws and practices it needs in-house – so the next best thing is FedEE. You have no equal and those who do not know about you do not know what they are missing!”
Above all, we are politically neutral and independently funded by our Members – with no financial support from governments, political parties or pressure groups. We also receive no revenue from advertisers or sponsors and take your corporate privacy very seriously.
❖ Join the world’s leading multinationals: FedEE is chaired by Ford Motor Company, while Houlihan Lokey – one of the world’s leading investment banks – serves on our Board. Today, 40% of the world’s top global companies are FedEE Corporate Members.
❖Monitoring global developments: We track new and revised laws, legal cases, HR practices and wider socio-political developments that affect company payrolls – all in a timely and practical way.
❖Influencing global employment policy: FedEE actively engages with governments worldwide and the EU, serving as a leading think tank that develops policy recommendations and promotes practical, business-friendly regulatory reform.
❖ Accessing world-class employment law expertise: Do you need to secure expertise to undertake international legal research, or do you dream of having faster, more competent and practical external legal advisers? Then join FedEE and utilize our customised employment law services. Many of the largest organisations in the World use ‘FedEE Law’ on a regular basis.
❖ Delivering trusted employment intelligence: We indicate the data you can trust and provide the true picture that governments often wish to obscure from view. We also warn member companies about the previously unrealised implications of planned changes in the employment field.
Sectoral Agreements Across Europe
The FedEE European Directory of Private Sectoral Collective Agreements 2026/27 is a practical reference work for multinational employers. It brings together, in a single volume, the principal sectoral collective agreements operating across the EU, EEA, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Compiled for HR professionals, legal advisers and employee relations specialists, it provides a clear guide to the collective bargaining frameworks that employers are most likely to encounter.
Its publication comes at a time when collective bargaining is assuming growing importance across Europe. EU Directive 2022/2041 has set Member State governments a target of increasing collective agreement coverage to 80% of their employed populations, whilst the Pay Transparency Directive is placing greater emphasis on collectively agreed pay structures and pay determination. For employers operating across borders, there will be little escape from understanding and complying with these frameworks, particularly where agreements are legally extended to cover all organisations within a sector.
The Directory does not attempt the impossible task of summarising the detailed provisions of thousands of agreements that are continually negotiated, revised and amended.
Instead, it identifies the principal agreements within each sector, explains how national bargaining systems operate and, crucially, identifies the employer organisations and trade unions responsible for negotiating them. Users are therefore able to establish quickly which agreements may affect their operations and where the authoritative texts and further guidance may be obtained.
Covering fourteen major private-sector industries, the Directory also explains national bargaining structures, workforce coverage, extension procedures and the legal status of agreements in each country. The result is a practical and consistent framework for comparing collective bargaining systems across Europe and identifying the agreements most likely to apply.
Issued as a working document and provided free to all corporate members of the Federation, the Directory will be updated regularly as bargaining systems evolve. Its purpose is straightforward: to provide multinational employers with a reliable point of reference in what is becoming an increasingly important and complex area of employment relations.
The FedEE Story
FedEE was supported initially by the European Commission.
What We Do
FedEE offers a range of “must have” services to multinational employers.
FedEE Achievements
Some achievements since our foundation in 1988.
The risk nobody owns
Truth about Structural job loss.
Career Path to Becoming an HR Director (HRD)
A lot is written about how to reach the top of the HR career ladder, but there is little of substance ever revealed about it. Most guidance focuses on obtaining the right qualifications and fails to distinguish the kind of jobs that lie at the top of the ladder. In truth, the pathway to the top is generally very tough and the best HRD jobs are the most demanding because they are those in multinational corporations. Here the job title too can vary from Director to VP or Chief People Officer. It may be a Group role or heading up either a country or regional operation.
It certainly takes a high level of competence, an effective personality, determination and a large measure of luck to advance so far. But the hard facts are also key to understanding what it takes.
FedEE has recently sought to untangle this mystery by asking several fundamental questions. Based on analysis of current CVs for a cross section of those in HRD jobs within multinational enterprises across Europe and North America we have found that 60% of HRDs are female and 10% of HRDs do not even have a degree. The average time in their current HRD post is 4.6 years and that it takes, on average, eight career moves (many of them sideways) to get to the top. Few actually make it to the top in the same organization, and the time in post immediately before the big job averages 3.8 years. Two thirds of those who are successful do so without ever working outside the HR function and, contrary to expectation, female HRDs do not need to climb their way through more jobs on the way to the top job than their male counterparts.
From Disclosure to Discovery
FedEE’s next issue of its quarterly “Labour Market Trends” published in October 2026 will examine the somewhat neglected issue of whistleblowing investigations. It is written for private-sector employers – who must decide what to do once a concern has been raised. Its central question is practical: how can an organisation establish what happened whilst treating the reporting person and those accused fairly, collating and preserving evidence and reaching a timely outcome?
The report begins by explaining why a reporting channel is only the start of an effective response. A disclosure may well contain enough specific, plausible and verifiable information together with substance to justify investigation, but seldom enough to prove the allegation. That distinction shapes the employer’s decision to clarify acts and circumstances – and puts into effect a process that we outline in some detail. Moreover, once an investigation is underway, the investigator must test competing explanations rather than allow the original allegation to determine the questions asked.
International and professional guidance is considered alongside concise studies of Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Vietnam. Switzerland receives separate treatment because its limited private-sector whistleblower protection and banking secrecy rules present particular risks for people involved in exposing or examining wrongdoing. The country studies concentrate on investigation requirements and practice, rather than attempting a general survey of whistleblowing law.
From this review, the report develops five principles: procedural fairness, analytical depth, evidential integrity, independence and timeliness. It examines how they apply to witness accounts, confidential records, conflicting evidence, obfuscation, evasion and false trails, counter-accusation, acts beyond someone’s powers.
The report’s practical outcome is a FedEE framework that follows the employer’s decisions from receipt of a qualifying disclosure through the various stages of an investigation to the assembly of findings, outcomes and final review. It is intended to be adapted to local law, rather than applied as a rigid checklist.
The report demonstrates how investigation earns confidence and credibility through the quality of its reasoning and the fairness of its process. Findings should lead to executable decisions. The five principles may also provide a useful framework for examining an investigation during litigation, including whether its evidence supports a finding of culpability.
FedEE driving change
The UK Office for National Statistics has announced a sharp contraction of its work programme, only weeks after the publication of Eloquent Deceivers, a new FedEE Monograph questioning the reliability of government data.
In a letter from Permanent Secretary Darren Tierney, the ONS said it must “recover the quality” of its core statistics and will reduce outputs across health, crime, and sub-national areas, review the Annual Population Survey, and close the Integrated Data Service Programme.
The Monograph argued that official data have become performative, shaped to fit political narratives rather than objective reality. The ONS’s sudden emphasis on “quality over quantity” and also on “prices” and “GDP” appears to echo that critique – a tacit admission that confidence in its figures has eroded.
Observers note that the timing of the ONS retrenchment suggests a defensive response to growing external scrutiny and a public debate now sharpened by Eloquent Deceivers and its call for truth in statistical governance. Purchase your copy today from Amazon (ISBN: 979- 8268641387).
FedEE Contact and Findings
Anti-Trust Actions
The increasing risks of HR practitioners being penalised for market collusion.
Leave Carryover
The law across Europe concerning the right to carryover untaken annual leave from year to year
Past Newswires
Examples of our fortnightly newswires sent to all FedEE Member organizations.
Join FedEE Today
Many of the world’s largest multinational companies already belong to The Federation of International Employers (FedEE®). We have a Worldwide Membership – with particular concentrations in North America, Western Europe, India and Japan. We were founded in 1988 and are regularly voted by our Members as an organisation they would recommend to other multinationals.
If your company has over 150 employees in two or more countries, has its own in-house HR department, and has been operating for two or more years then you really cannot afford to operate without being part of the Federation. The approval process takes less than a day and for immediate access to our services we have an online credit card payment facility. Membership costs as little as €998.00 a year. Please check here to view the table of our membership services. Sign up now.
What Next?
Once a completed application has been received it will be quickly reviewed by our Membership Review Group and, if approved, we shall send an email to the applicant confirming acceptance – normally within 24 hours. The Secretary-General also usually calls to welcome all new members.
Our letter of confirmation will have an attached invoice containing our bank details to allow payment. The membership fee may be settled by bank transfer within 35 days or, on request, via a credit card payment link. As soon as the fee has been settled we shall send out passwords to all nominated users and place them on our Newswire list. At the end of each subscription year we shall write inviting the Corporate Member to renew. 94% of Members renew at this time.
Membership renewal is not automatic, but we shall retain membership for a certain period to allow for continuity. Helpline bundles may be purchased at any time and unused enquiries in the bundles do not expire whilst membership is retained.
Contact Us
Address, email, telephone numbers and on line payments so you can get in touch from anywhere around the world.
Senior Management Team
Introducing our key staff and Board Members.
FedEE Customised HR services
The FedEE Legal Counsel team is constantly called upon for tailored research and advice.
Clear Thinking
Most people are not taught to think and few realize that clear thinking originates in perceptions and personal identity.
