Executive Biographies
Ulrich Holtz
Ulrich Holtz
General Manager of Human Resources,
Microsoft International
Ulrich Holtz was appointed to his current role of general manager of human resources (HR) for Microsoft International, in 2005. Previously, he was the director of HR for Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
Since joining Microsoft in 1992, Ulrich has held a number of strategic roles within the German subsidiary and Microsoft EMEA. For five years he held the position of HR director for Central Europe. He played a major role in establishing Microsoft’s new subsidiaries in Eastern Europe. He also successfully oversaw the acquisition of Navision, which is now the largest Microsoft product development centre outside of the US.
Under his leadership several initiatives have been launched across EMEA region, including an annual employee feedback process to measure the company’s organisational health index; learning networks, where employees have the chance to connect with each other across different departments and levels; the EMEA sales and service academies, which are geared towards graduates and postgraduates and offer a 12–18-month trainee programme; regular people reviews with management teams; and new activities to promote diversity initiatives in the region.
The result of the HR work in Microsoft EMEA was reflected in several awards in the EU competition “Great Place To Work” in recent years. In 2004, the Belgian and German subsidiaries were rewarded with the number-one position for their countries, while in France, Finland and Italy Microsoft subsidiaries were ranked second and several other subsidiaries within the EMEA region were listed in the top ten in the survey.
Before joining Microsoft, Ulrich was European staffing manager at the European headquarters of Hewlett-Packard in Geneva.
Ulrich holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Würzburg, Germany. In his spare time he enjoys spending time with his family and he also loves to sail.
