CEO Loos promotes 'great place to work'
Christoph Loos, CEO of Hilti Group, poses with his company’s signature hard hat at the company’s Korea office in southern Seoul, on Nov.1. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk
Hilti Group pushes 'Champion 2020' for sustainable growth
By Kim Ji-soo
Loos smiles during an interview with The Korea Times. / Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk
Coming out of a meeting, Christoph Loos, the globe-trotting CEO of Hilti Group., easily put on the company’s hard hat and picked up the hammer drill to pose for a photo op. For executives and employees of Hilti, a supplier of quality, innovative and specialized tools for construction professionals, on-site demonstrations are a regular event.
“It’s just that we don’t usually wear a suit (when handling power tools),” Loos said, smiling in an interview with The Korea Times.
Loos was visiting Korea as Hilti Korea marked its 30th year in the country. Hilti first became familiar with the country because of Korean workers in the Middle East in the late 1970s. Hilti Korea has been growing significantly in recent years, and Loos forecasts further growth in the country, the fifth-biggest market in Asia and an important player in the company’s Asian portfolio.
“We believe we can double business in the next five to seven years in Korea in all construction segments including infrastructure, commercial, residential, and oil and gas,” Loos said. Hilti Korea posted 68.4 billion won in sales in 2015 and is expected to post double-digit growth this year.
“The construction market in Korea is expected to grow by 2 to 4 percent in the next few years,” he said, adding this will give Hilti, which currently has a fairly small market share, a significant opportunity to capture more.
“Also, the construction market (in Korea) asks for products that make job sites safer, make buildings safer, and that allow contractors to be faster and save labor costs,” Loos said. “There is a great need for more productivity for Korean construction companies.”
Loos also ascribed his optimistic forecast to the Korean team that he met. The multinational company’s CEO visits each country typically for three days, going to sites with sales people, and holding internal meetings with employees and business meetings.
“We have a great team here in Korea,” he said. “We work with a team to become even more team-oriented, across departments and across hierarchies,” he said, adding that Korean companies — Hilti Korea included — tend to be more hierarchical.
This team dynamic is central to the operation of Hilti Group. The company was voted for such awards as the 10th in Best Workplaces in Europe by “Great Place to Work” Award in 2016; Hilti US ranked 68th in Fortune’s “100 Best Workplaces for Millennials” in 2015; and Hilti Korea one of Aon Hewitt’s top 10 employers in Korea in 2016. Loos stressed the singular combination of caring for people and demanding high performance as one of the key factors to Hilti Group’s success.
The group posted net sales of 5.12 trillion won in 2015 and this is expected to grow 7 to 8 percent in 2016. Loos attributed this feat to the multinational company implementing the “Champion 2020” strategy, focusing on leadership and differentiation. He also noted the company’s direct customer contact. “Customers work with us and pay a price premium because of the combination of high quality products and many services our sales force and engineers provide, such as technical advice or on-the-job training for our customers,” he said.
As CEO, he sees himself as chief guardian of the cultural values of integrity, teamwork, courage and commitment, values with which the millennial generation can also relate.
“Let’s take integrity for example. People want to have an environment where they don’t have to play a role. They want to behave similarly, like they do in their private lives. They want to have honest conversations,” Loos said regarding managers who give employees honest feedback about their performance and career development.
Further, as people in general want to work in teams and communicate across departments and country borders, this concept also resonates very well with young people. Loos said that in that vein, the other values of commitment and courage correspond. With respect to courage, he said he wants to dial it up in Korea, because Koreans, culturally, tend to wait for their bosses’ words. “We (at Hilti) have a type of culture where teams take responsibility and they decide what they have to do. The management on top challenges, observes and gives feedback ... because this is what makes teams more successful.”
Born in Germany in 1968, Loos holds a doctorate in business administration from University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. He worked in international management consultancy in Germany and China. He joined Hilti in 2001, first leading the corporate development team and then establishing the strategic marketing unit. He worked as a general manager of Hilti Germany, a stint that he described as one of most challenging.
During his three years in Germany, when the company was bogged down by numerous management changes and more than a decade of unsatisfactory results, Loos and his team spent a tremendous amount of time with more than 1,300 team members to re-establish self-confidence, teamwork, trust in management and a fighting spirit.
He experienced that situation again later in his career, when he became the group’s CEO two years ago. Loos has been a member of the executive board since 2007, and he became CEO in 2014.
“Going from being a peer to becoming the boss is not an easy situation to manage,” Loos said. But he again made significant efforts to rebuild the trust and team dynamics.
“If you’re not performing well as (a member of) a top team of a company, if you’re not aligned on the most important direction of the company, if you’re not able to speak with one voice to your organization on what is important and what is expected, then you create chaos in the company,” he said.
Once you become aligned with your team members, you can multiply the team’s combined energy, enabling it to flourish throughout the company, Loos said.
“My experience is that many top leadership teams in other big companies under-invest in such dynamics,” he said.
As a global CEO, Loos finds it exciting to see in person Hilti’s operations in other countries. He has a tough juggling act, as he is also a husband and father and wants to spend more time with his family.
Hilti as a group is looking forward to tackling the challenges of dealing with uneven performances in global markets, as well as finding, training and retaining people and responding to the challenges and opportunities digitalization presents to construction.
“More large buildings are being modeled completely in 3D on computers, and many small applications are being designed already on the computer models,” he said, “so we have to make sure that our products are already being designed on digital models and that all our products are available as digital objects so that they can be integrated into these models.”
Hilti, the company
Hilti Korea workers using their products on site in this file photo. / Courtesy of Hilti Korea
Hilti Group, a top solutions company serving construction professionals, was founded in 1941 in the small nation of Liechtenstein by Martin and Eugen Hilti. The supplier of quality, innovative and specialized tools and fastening systems for professional users has over 24,000 employees in 120 countries over the world.
Hilti Korea was established on July 10, 1986. Hilti Korea provides innovative products, equipment and services for construction professionals. Its bestsellers, namely anchors, nailing machines, chemical firestops and power tools are often used at landmark construction projects. In Korea, these include buildings such as Lotte World II high-rise and the second passenger terminal at Incheon International Airport.
Currently employing around 200 employees in Korea including engineers and sales people, Hilti Korea was voted one of the top 10 best employers in Korea by Aon-Hewitt.