Bill McDermott, CEO of major cloud computing company, says it's faster to operate in us

Bill McDermott is the CEO of ServiceNow NOW, a major cloud computing company headquartered in Santa Clara, California.

The tech executive did not always run companies based in Silicon Valley. He served as CEO of SAP SAP a global software giant based in Walldorf, Germany between 2014 and 2019.

I think the big thing is speed. The greatest asset in business is speed, McDermott told Yahoo Finance. He said it's faster to operate in the U.S. on a day-to- day basis, because European companies are often less efficient because they must balance employee representative interests and board members interests.

Europe has more union representation than the United States. As of 2021, roughly 10 percent of workers in the United States have unionized. The most recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OCED places union membership in Germany at around 16%. The rates can get as high as 26% in Ireland and 92% in Iceland in the rest of Europe.

It is a bit more challenging than it is. There are more channels that need to be operated through when employees and external board members are equally involved in the management of senior management, and there are more channels that have to be operated through to get things done, McDermott says.

Employee representatives can also play a key role in protecting workers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, unionized workers earn 11.2% more in wages than non-unionized peers. McDermott insists that American companies are more efficient, but he concedes that speed can come at the cost of workers.

I just think we move a bit faster. That's not always good, by the way, sometimes more checks and balances are very positive, McDermott said. I think employee representatives play a very important role in European companies, if management and employees are on the same page. The U.S. has fewer unionized employees than Europe, but the country recently experienced a resurgence of unions. The unions are forming at major companies such as Apple, Starbucks, Trader Joe's and REI. According to Gallup's poll from 2021, nearly 70% of Americans approve of labor unions.

Despite any challenges that McDermott might have faced, SAP grew under his leadership. McDermott was the CEO of SAP from $39 billion to $163 billion in market cap in 2019, according to TechCrunch, who has 107,415 total employees and offices in 180 countries.