What is company integration management (BEM)?
Company integration management (BEM) is a legally required process in which employers work with sick employees to clarify how incapacity can be overcome, recurrence prevented, and the job preserved. The legal basis is § 167 (2) SGB IX. It is explicitly an open-ended search process – there is no prescribed measure.
Possible outcomes range from adapting the workplace to a phased reintegration or organisational changes.
When is a BEM mandatory?
The employer must offer a BEM once an employee has been unfit for work for more than six weeks (42 calendar days) within twelve months – continuously or in several phases. It applies to all companies regardless of size, to all employees (not only severely disabled people), and the 12-month window is rolling.
The BEM meeting: step by step
- Invitation in writing, explaining goals, process, voluntariness and data protection.
- Consent: the BEM only starts with the employee's explicit agreement.
- Initial meeting: joint review of stressors and what helps the return.
- Measures: concrete steps (workplace adaptation, reintegration, training, transfer).
- Implementation & follow-up with an effectiveness review.
- Documentation in a separate BEM file, kept apart from the personnel file.
Voluntariness and data protection
For employees the BEM is voluntary; declining must not cause disadvantages. Health data is subject to strict protection (Art. 9 GDPR), collected only with consent and kept in a separate BEM file.
BEM and illness-related dismissal
Under settled BAG case law, a properly offered BEM is a de facto prerequisite for a valid illness-related dismissal. Without one, the employer faces a high evidentiary hurdle in court.
BEM, mental health and prevention
A large share of BEM cases have psychological causes. BEM, however, only acts after illness. The more effective – and legally required – lever is prevention: the psychological risk assessment under §5 ArbSchG uncovers psychological stressors before they cause illness and BEM cases. Learn more →
