René Villiger

Working with senior leaders and organisations to drive business transformation, aligning organisation design, leadership, and culture to enable strategy execution in complex, international environments. Selective in mandates; open to senior HR leadership roles with end-to-end transformation responsibility.

Partnered closely with senior leaders to steer holding-wide people priorities and HR decisions supporting business transformation and portfolio growth. Co-created and implemented the Group People Strategy across a diverse portfolio, balancing global consistency with local relevance. Established HR governance and compliance frameworks across jurisdictions, including Works Council collaboration, HR policy development and annual pay governance.

Advised early-stage ventures on people strategy, leadership development and organizational scaling. Designed HR structures and culture frameworks to enable growth and investor readiness.

Arranged global transformation initiatives in a complex post-separation environment, working closely with senior leaders to strengthen culture, leadership and organisational effectiveness. Supported thousands of employees across EMEA through the DowDuPont separation by driving culture and employee experience programmes. Built practical global change frameworks with local flexibility and coached leaders to navigate complex cross-regional change with confidence.

Led complex people and organisation initiatives across M&A, restructuring, talent and systems transformation to strengthen business performance and market positioning. Directed the EMEAI people workstream for the DuPont–Corteva separation, transferring 3,000 employees with full compliance. Rebuilt the 85-person HR organisation, implemented Workday across the region and redesigned the HR operating model to strengthen partnering capability and execution across 40+ countries.

Directed HR across 26 countries spanning Switzerland, CEE and Iberia, supporting sustained double-digit business growth through an integrated talent and HR operating model, including shared services. Delivered benefits harmonisation for 2,000 employees during the Dow Corning integration across EMEAI, balancing compliance, cost and local practices. Also drove safety culture improvements, supported major transformation programmes, created a new Swiss pension plan and digitalised pension administration.

Scaled business performance across 24 countries by strengthening leadership capability, succession depth and HR effectiveness in a matrix organisation. Built and developed a 14-person HR team into trusted business partners, introduced a regional operating model balancing global consistency with local relevance and contributed to Microsoft winning the Worldwide Best Subsidiary Award twice. Also established succession pipelines, talent frameworks and strong labour law compliance across multiple jurisdictions.

Operated as end-to-end HR lead and member of the Swiss management team, supporting consistent double-digit revenue growth through a focused people roadmap. Managed HR across talent, performance, pay, employee relations and compliance while partnering with commercial leaders. Introduced a structured career model, redesigned performance management, improved wellbeing engagement scores and led flexible working, acquisition integration and full employee redeployment during a site closure.

Led the HR Business Partner organisation for IBM Switzerland, delivering end-to-end HR services for 3,300 employees. Built a Centre of Excellence for talent acquisition and introduced an HR Scorecard to strengthen quality and strategic execution. Also rolled out a new performance management system and supported the PwC Consulting acquisition and integration into IBM Business Consulting Services.

Created and embedded management system to support HiPo review, management rotation and succession planning as well as analysis of education gaps. Led and managed the leadership development program according to IBM competency framework to nurture the succession planning for management roles.

Designed and executed development centres according to competency framework. Established and supported potential analysis through various instruments and created development plans for future management potentials incl. specific career coaching. Driven transparency of management career path through intranet and employee magazine.

Hired 18 trainees through interviews, personality tests and assessment centres. Created setup within business to land trainees within the organization establishing fitting roles for graduates. Driven employer branding at universities and set up relationships to Swiss education institutions.

Aligned development needs for specific segment with overall readiness offerings. Supported and coached various individuals with development and career planning needs. Led setup, organization, and execution of leadership seminars for assigned business segment.

Supporting change consulting team with transformation of Zurich Switzerland to new business and market segmentation through workshop preparation, analytics of data and statistics.

The program prepares senior professionals for leading change initiatives directly, or advising senior executives and board directors to develop a sustainable, high-performing organizational culture.