{"id":956,"date":"2025-05-27T14:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T12:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ebl.ort-web.de\/federal-labour-court-bag-confirms-compensation-due-to-delayed-target-setting\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:02:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T15:02:45","slug":"federal-labour-court-bag-confirms-compensation-due-to-delayed-target-setting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebl-legal.de\/en\/federal-labour-court-bag-confirms-compensation-due-to-delayed-target-setting\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Labour Court (BAG) confirms: compensation due to delayed target setting."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After the plaintiff resigned from his position with the defendant in November 2019, he sued for damages. Why? He claimed that he had been informed of the company&#8217;s targets late, so that he no opportunity to fully exploit the performance-related part of his remuneration. In addition to the variable remuneration paid in the amount of \u20ac15,586.55, he claimed damages amounting to \u20ac16,035.94 gross.<\/p>\n<p>In the employment contract, the parties had agreed that 30% of his gross annual salary would be paid depending on his target achievement. In a works agreement, the defendant and the local works council agreed that the employees would receive a specific target by 1 March of the calendar year. It remained disputed when the plaintiff was actually informed of the relevant parameters of the company&#8217;s targets. In any case, he received specific figures on the company&#8217;s targets in mid-October of that year. No individual targets were set at all.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The employer has a u<strong>nilateral right to determine performance<\/strong> targets within the meaning of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gesetze-im-internet.de\/bgb\/__315.html\">Section 315 (1) <\/a>of the <strong>German Civil Code.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Unlike with target agreements, the employer sets targets alone. The employee has no obligation to cooperate in this regard. The date up to which a target agreement can be made up depends on the meaning and purpose of the performance determination and the interests of the parties. If a subsequent target is unable to fulfil its motivational function, impossibility occurs in accordance with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gesetze-im-internet.de\/bgb\/__275.html\">Section 275 (1) <\/a>of the German Civil Code. At any rate, this is the case on expiry of the relevant target period. In the present proceedings, the Federal Labour Court dismissed the defendant&#8217;s appeal and upheld the appeal decision of the Cologne Regional Labour Court of 6 February 2024 The latter had ordered the defendant to pay damages in lieu of performance in accordance with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gesetze-im-internet.de\/bgb\/__280.html\">Sections 280 (1),<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gesetze-im-internet.de\/bgb\/__283.html\">(3) 283,<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gesetze-im-internet.de\/bgb\/__252.html\">252<\/a> of the German Civil Code in the amount of \u20ac16,035.94 gross to the plaintiff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After the plaintiff resigned from his position with the defendant in November 2019, he sued for damages. Why? He claimed that he had been informed of the company&#8217;s targets late, so that he no opportunity to fully exploit the performance-related part of his remuneration. In addition to the variable remuneration paid in the amount of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":955,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-unkategorisiert"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebl-legal.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebl-legal.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebl-legal.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebl-legal.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebl-legal.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ebl-legal.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":999,"href":"https:\/\/ebl-legal.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956\/revisions\/999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebl-legal.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebl-legal.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebl-legal.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebl-legal.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}