Original production by Thrive HR Exchange
Hosted by Matthew Chapman, Co-creator of Thrive HR Exchange and Founder of ChapmanCG

Byron and I briefly spoke about life at IKEA, in his role as Global Retail People and Culture Leader, covering 190,000 employees, and specifically on learnings from recent times. Byron’s career has taken him around the world to Singapore, Denmark, UK and then back to Denmark. Having worked with Nokia, Microsoft, Maersk, AstraZeneca, Mercer and now IKEA. Please join me as I chat with Byron. I hope that you’ll glean some meaningful insights, as I did.

Key topics discussed:

• Working with social partners to implement living wage policies and to preserve co-workers' employability

• Retaining company ethos during business transformation from brick-and-mortar to e-commerce

• Executing at speed but with flexibility on internal controls

• Enabling your people, both as individuals and part of the organisation with wellbeing and safety top priority

Guest Bio:

Byron is the People & Culture leader for IKEA Retail based in Malmo, Sweden. He is responsible for driving the people strategy and organizational effectiveness for the 160,000 employees working in over 350 stores and across 30 countries. Byron comes with more than two decades of extensive experience in leading the HR function across diverse industries. In his previous role, he was the Global HR Leader for Mercer Services, Technology and Digital based in London.

Prior to joining Mercer, Byron held several HR leadership positions at AstraZeneca, Maersk Line, Microsoft, Nokia and Aetna in Europe, Asia and the Americas. He is a subject matter expert in areas like employee engagement, HR effectiveness, organizational development, change management and transformation.