New start of the Professional MBA Automotive Industry study at STU during holidays in August.

The module Organizational Behaviour & Human Resource Management (HRM) of Professional MBA Automotive Industry study was originally scheduled in Bratislava from Thursday to Sunday, 12th to 15th March 2020. Although already in February 2020 the outbreak of Covid-19 was discussed among us, there were no cases reported in Slovakia. This was true until Friday 6th March 2020 when the first case was reported some 50 kilometres far from Bratislava. On Sunday 8th March, the Rector of STU professor Miroslav Fikar announced publicly that the face-to-face teaching at STU will be interrupted from Monday 9 March 2020. We announced that to students and partners at TU Wien and called for “more intensive communication” already on Sunday evening. On Monday 9th March the first videoconference with all AMBA students took place. Students informed about their situation and intentions, and options of postponing or displacing the module were discussed. On the next day, on Tuesday 10th still six students wanted to travel to Bratislava. The lecturers were also prepared to start the module on Thursday and to provide online support for those who were not able to come. It was quite a hot discussion during the videoconference on Tuesday afternoon, actually two days before the planned start of the module. Options included an online video conference, alternative meeting room in Bratislava or in Vienna, but most people decided to shift the module later "to get the FULL benefit from the course".
Restrictions due to Covid-19 lasted at STU more than 3 months. Lectures and even examinations for regular students were replaced by online distance education. Actually, the regular students’ life was postponed to start again with the new semester in September.
The students of automotive MBA, however, are special students. They wanted to get full benefit of being a student AMBA and they decided to attend the school also during holiday time just not to lose a minute from the study. On July 2nd, the long COVID-19 break was finally over and first classroom lectures were held at the TU Wien. The first module at STU was the above mentioned HRM module that started on August 6th .

The study was reopen by assoc. prof. Ján Lešinský, academic director of the programme at STU. The module started with the lecture of Ing. Tatiana Orglerová, MBA about the context of Human Resources management and Organizational behavior in today’s organization. Mrs. Orglerová is not only a successful HR manager of multinational company but at the same time also a president of Association of Slovak HR managers.
Due to travel restrictions, three students from the Philippines, Ukraine and the United Arab Emirates could not attend lectures. We were happy that all other participants were present.

Second half of this full four-day module was provided by Dr. Ján Uriga (on picture again with assoc. prof. Ján Lešinský)

Why the HR management is so important and why lectures of these two lecturers were always popular? All managers know that it is always possible to work more and better, but only few know how to tell it to subordinates. Tatiana has been working for one of the major HR US companies, and in her presentation on the topics: Job Design, Compensation system, Performance management and the Leadership she showed that they are not only empty phrases. Getting answers to all their questions, and playing role games with Tatiana meant for the students to get access to the most important company success factor – working with motivated people.
Dr. Uriga, despite his young age has been teaching in the AMBA study already 10 years. Graduated psychologist promoted to a senior consultant at PWC, during the time of being a teacher in the course. His expertise and teaching fields include Motivation, Competency Based Interview, and Change management. He is always finishing his lectures with new trends and innovations in the HR.

We think that after the long break, the lectures offered the students a good opportunity to meet again and enjoy the study.