Dr. Gunilla Fincke is Director General for Skills, Vocational Training and Securing a Skilled Labour Force at the German Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (BMAS) since January 2022. From 2018 to 2021, she led a division at BMAS focused on migration and integration policy. Her career spans multiple leadership roles: From 2014 to 2018, she headed the policy department of the SPD party executive, and from 2008 to 2014, she served as Managing Director of the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration (SVR). She holds a PhD on the second generation of immigrants in Germany and a Master’s in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Fincke is a recognized expert in labor market policy, migration, and workforce development. Her international experience and interdisciplinary approach shape her work, which is defined by innovative solutions and cross-sector collaboration.
You have worked in academia, private foundations, political parties, and public administration. How has your professional journey through these various levels of governance shaped your approach to policy making and leadership?
My professional experience has given me very different perspectives on the topic of migration. If you want to bring about change to the policy field, you need to combine all those perspectives. You need solid facts and research-based findings as the basis of your proposal (academia), experiences from existing pilot projects funded from civil society (foundations), a good understanding of political decision-making (parties), building coalitions for a topic (advocacy), professional management and (very importantly) good administrative processes.
As the managing director of the SVR, you were a leading voice in migration research. How has this academic background influenced your work in political practice?
Doing research and research-based advocacy, I have gained strong convictions on the topic of migration and integration. Funnily, over the last twenty years, these very same convictions have often put me on the left and the center of the political sphere, but sometimes also on the right, as the political discourse changed and my convictions stayed the same.
With a topic that polarizes that much, I find it especially important to keep “Maß und Mitte” – to always bring facts back into the debate instead of feelings and anecdotal evidence. And to seriously try to understand all positions while not approving them. Germany, for many years, has had a political consensus of the democratic parties that the immigration of skilled workers is a good thing and that, apart from interest-based immigration, Germany has a moral obligation to take in refugees. This differs from other countries like the UK, where a period of very liberal immigration was followed by (at least) formal closure. In my view, it is very important to maintain some sort of societal consensus on these controversial topics to manage them successfully and to abstain from instrumentalizing these questions.
Ministries are often seen as slow-moving bureaucracies. How do you personally manage to drive meaningful innovation within these structures?
I do not see the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs as a slow-moving bureaucracy. I see it as a very vibrant place with lots of people burning for the topics they are working on, every single day wanting to make this world a better place and improving the social cohesion of our society. My colleagues in the directorate general work on so many great topics. Just this week, we had the Fachkräftekongress (Fachkräftekongress – BMAS) with 700 participants from civil society, companies, unions, regional networks, municipalities, Länder and federal administration. We discussed all the aspects of securing a skilled workforce: vocational training, continuing education, corporate culture, the participation of women, elderly and the handicapped on the labour market, immigration and the integration, especially of refugees and migrant women. A ministry has to give good advice to the political sphere and continuously work on successful implementation. Passing laws is half the battle, the other half is good implementation. Many great ideas have been discredited by bad implementation.
Which leadership principles are most important to you when leading a team in a complex political environment?
As always: respect, appreciation for diversity and different perspectives, transparency and trust. I also find it very important to keep in mind which processes and issues are under my control, which in my circle of influence and which processes and decisions are beyond my reach. As public employees, we are privileged to have a very large circle of influence, and we need to use it fully. However, in order not to burn out, we also have to accept that some issues in the complex political environment are out of our influence.
By the way, at the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, we always have a group of students from the Hertie School working at that ministry for a year. They bring so much experience to our organization and tend to challenge the way we are used to doing things. This is a wonderful learning experience for everybody, and saying good-bye to the ‘Herties’ after a year is always very sad!
The world of work is changing rapidly. Is there a development that Germany is not yet prepared for but will be crucial in the coming decade?
The transformation of our economy is questioning our business models, requiring us to find new markets, disrupting individual employment paths and challenging our educational system. It also requires us to rethink the way we recruit: Asking for the perfectly skilled professional with all the recognized certificates and proven soft skills will no longer work. We have to move from a culture that is looking at deficiencies to a work culture that is searching for opportunities and, thus, empowers us to courageously take a step to the unknown future.
This week’s Friday’s Five was conducted by Nicolas Henriksson, this year’s Deputy Editor-in-Chief & Podcast Manager of The Governance Post.