Our second semester MBA students, along with Master students from HSPF‘s Human Resource Management program, excitedly welcomed Mr. Oliver Maassen, Board Member and Chief Human Resource Officer, TRUMPF SE + Co. KG as a guest speaker.
Mr. Maassen began the session by briefly talking about his journey from being in corporate banking to joining the widely known family-owned business TRUMPF. He mentions the innovation processes that TRUMPF has and continues to undertake resulting in exciting projects such as one in quantum computing technology. Innovation does not only occur in and for business units, the HR department, likewise, turns to innovation in order to handle current workforce trends.
Among the many trends, people strategy such as New Work and Agility (with emphasis on agile organisation) are in focus at TRUMPF. Furthermore, he also elaborated about key areas that they are placing effort on to support and develop their workforce; of which entails diversity and internalisation, re-skilling and up-skilling, flexibilitisation of work and people analytics.
The quantitative and qualitative measurement of people performance, and in particular handling toxic employees, was a topic of interest for the captivated audience. Mr Maassen expertly traversed hard-hitting questions related to this, revealing a seasoned professional who does not shy away from such a challenge.
Finally, we would like to offer huge thank you to Mr. Maassen for making the time and effort to impart valuable insights to our students!

Text/photo: Michelle Ahras, Class of 2023