Case Study: Organising supervisory board elections digitally with CMS Election

In 2025, CMS Election underwent a major overhaul to tailor the tool even more closely to the practical requirements of supervisory board elections. This was based on the experience gained from previous election projects since the go-live in 2022. From the 2026 season onwards, the new version was then put to use in the first specific projects, including, amongst others, the election of the supervisory board of a company in the technology sector. This project provides valuable insight into how the tool works in practice and the contribution it can make to the ongoing procedure. A brief summary:

Electing employee representatives to the supervisory board is a procedure which, due to the large number of parties involved and the stringent formal requirements, becomes a mammoth task in project management for the company.

The election procedure involves numerous steps, deadlines and formal requirements laid down by law. At the same time, various bodies are responsible for implementing them so it is necessary to work in a coordinated manner.

These include, above all, the central coordinating main election committee, and numerous local election committees, which take on local responsibilities in the various worksites.

Further challenges arise from the fact that supervisory board elections typically only take place once every five years. Experience gained from previous elections is often no longer available or is only documented to a limited extent. Procedures, areas of responsibility and specialist knowledge therefore often have to be rebuilt from scratch.

In the context of the project, this meant, in particular:

• many tasks that need to be co-ordinated simultaneously
• extensive documentation requirements and formalities
• the need for ongoing coordination
• the need to familiarise oneself repeatedly with individual steps and legal issues.

CMS Election was used as the central platform for organising and conducting the election of employee representatives to the supervisory board.

The organisational preparations began as early as the middle of last year, before the actual project work got underway in September. Works council elections were also taking place at the company at the same time. 

Consequently, the demands regarding planning, coordination and transparency throughout the entire project period were considerable, which was one of the reasons for using the CMS Election tool to coordinate the supervisory board election.

All of the relevant steps were clearly set out in the tool, from drawing up the timeline, through the inaugural meeting of the election committees, to the publication of the new supervisory board members in the German Federal Gazette.

This provided the parties involved with a clearly structured framework: tasks and deadlines were stored in the system, responsibilities were clearly assigned, and the current status of the procedure was visible to all those involved at all times.
A fundamental principle of CMS Election: users complete their respective tasks at the scheduled time. The tool provides the necessary guidance and guides the parties involved through each stage step by step.

In addition, election-specific functions are used, for example when working with lists of voters and nominations. This way it is possible to centralise organisational processes, reduce media breaks and process sensitive data within a secure system environment.

Various legal issues arose during the course of the project, which is not unusual when it comes to complex supervisory board elections. These relate, for example, to formal requirements for individual stages of the procedure or issues concerning nominations and signatures of supporters.

A key advantage of our services for clients is the close integration of digital process support and legal advice. CMS Election guides the parties involved through the organisational and administrative requirements of the procedure. At the same time, CMS's employment law experts were on hand to answer legal queries.

This holistic approach includes answering any questions that arise and providing support and training to the electoral committees. This resulted in a combination of digital process management and legal expertise, which provided the parties with a single point of contact for both sides of the procedure and enabled outstanding issues to be resolved without complication.

As the project progressed, a number of themes quickly emerged which were regarded as particularly helpful by the project management and the parties involved.

At the beginning, the project management team anticipated that the greatest challenge would lie in the organisational scope of the procedure. The large number of parties involved, the lengthy duration of the election and the multitude of tasks and deadlines required ongoing coordination over many months. It was against this backdrop, too, that the decision was made to use CMS Election.

During discussions with the parties involved, the clear structure of CMS Election and the centralised collation of all information were highlighted as positive features. The dashboard and roadmap provided a clear overview of the current status and the next steps, and helped keep track of the numerous legal and organisational requirements.

Support with formal verification measures was also particularly praised. The central election committee described the automatic verification of supporters of candidate nominations as extremely helpful.

Other aspects that received positive feedback included the decision-making function within the list of voters and the clear task descriptions, which were seen as practical and helpful. One of the individuals involved summed up their overall impression succinctly: "The tool is incredibly clever."

Another positive aspect of this project was the close involvement of users in the further development of the tool. The users, and in particular the project management team, shared their experiences openly and constructively and provided valuable suggestions for future improvements.

Feedback of this kind from real-world election projects is particularly valuable for the further development of the product. It helps to further develop the tool from a technical perspective, and to tailor it even more closely to the actual needs of electoral committees and project managers.

The clearest feedback on the project's success came from the project management team themselves: When asked whether CMS Election would be used again for the next supervisory board election, the reply was immediate: "Yes."