Our report that provides overview of current automotive leadership structure and ongoing trends within the industry is ready! Take a look at some of our insights.

If you are interested in additional details or report itself, please contact Ana Santovac at santovac@heimeier-executive.com

Key pillars of automotive industry`s top management structure: highly-educated, young and fast-growing

December 2022

Current position

Position categories are for the whole analyzed pool, including both local leaders and expats. We have 38.7% of General Managers, 48% of Plant Managers and 13.3% of Operations Managers. If we look only at local managers, the picture is slightly different as we have 6% larger pool of Plant Managers and 6% lower pool of General Managers.
The whole analyzed pool include 73.3% of local leaders and 26.7% of expats in Serbia.

Age of leaders within automotive industry

Almost 40% of leaders in automotive industry in Serbia are between 48 and 52 years old. It is striking that the focus is on the lower half of the diagram, with less than 10% of leaders older than 52 years, which implies overall young structure. The picture is not much different even if we are looking at specific position category: in all three singularly, we have only about 10% of managers over 52. The difference is in distribution within the remaining categories: majority of General Managers are within category 48 to 52 (51.7%), as well as one third of Plant Managers, while majority of Operations Managers are within category 43 to 47 (50%).

Number of years in the position

64% of Managers have been in their current roles for up to 3 years. Additionally, 57,3% of Managers came to their current positions within the company, through internal promotion to the role. If we look at the way of getting to the position separately for expats and separately for local managers, we have a slightly different picture. Internally promoted and externally recruited local managers have an equal distribution, 50-50, while expats have 20% externally recruited for the engagement and 80% of those who already worked in the same company.