Does the fifty-employee threshold apply per company or to the entire group?
In companies that operate with multiple legal entities, this question comes up repeatedly: do you count the fifty employees per private company, or do you add everyone in the group together? The starting point is that the obligation rests with the employer, and that is the legal entity that has the employment contracts. A private company with fifty or more of its own employees is in principle subject to its own reporting obligation, regardless of what a sister company does.
A private company with, for example, thirty employees does not automatically fall under the obligation on its own, even if another company in the same group employs one hundred people. The legal entity is the starting point, not the holding company or the group as a whole. This means that a concern with four private companies of thirty employees each has, formally speaking, none of those companies above the threshold, although there are a total of one hundred twenty people working there.
When it can be different
This division per legal entity is the starting point, but not an absolute guarantee. Supervisory authorities and judges sometimes look in cases of doubt at who actually acts as the employer, and not only at the name that appears above the employment contract. This applies, for example, to arrangements where one private company is nominally the employer, but the direction, personnel policy, and day-to-day management are entirely with another entity. For the exact explanation in your situation, this is a question for a lawyer, not something that can be answered in general terms.
To see how the count looks in your own situation, it is usually faster to work through the question per legal entity than to reason about it in general terms. check in a few questions whether this applies to your company gives a first direction for this, without you needing an account for it.
A shared reporting channel for smaller employers
The European directive on which this obligation is based gives member states room to allow employers in the smaller bandwidth, roughly between fifty and several hundred employees, to cooperate in setting up a channel. They can then share resources for the receipt and investigation of reports, while each employer remains responsible for the follow-up of a report that concerns them. How this is precisely arranged differs per member state.
For a group with multiple private companies, this is often a practical solution: not because the threshold applies to the group as a whole, but because sharing a channel is more efficient than setting something up separately for each private company. A private company just above fifty does not need to build everything on its own.
How you determine the number of employees per legal entity
Who exactly counts towards the threshold is a question in itself: permanent employees, on-call workers, temporary workers, and part-time employees do not all count in the same way. the knowledge base about who exactly counts addresses this specifically. What is important here above all is that you perform that count per legal entity, and not once for the entire group.
If your organisation consists of multiple private companies, it is advisable to document the count for each private company separately, even if the outcome is that the private company remains below fifty. In this way you have recorded why no reporting channel was set up for that entity, should there be a question about it later.
What this means in practice
For an installation company with a holding and two operating companies of each several tens of employees, this usually means you check per private company whether the threshold is reached, and then you see whether a shared channel for the group is practical. For a single private company that clearly is above fifty, the outcome is simple: the obligation applies to that legal entity.
Where the count is less clear-cut, for instance due to fluctuating staff or a private limited company hovering around the threshold, it is advisable to put the situation before a legal counsel. the frequently asked questions about the threshold and the count provides a number of common cases of doubt, but does not replace legal advice.
Do you want to quickly find out where your company stands, even if you operate with multiple legal entities? The free quick-scan provides an initial indication in just a few questions, and the knowledge base is freely accessible for those who wish to learn more.