Bjørn Kjerulf is a seasoned player in the Rewards industry. He started as a student assistant in the 90s conducting his first salary survey from scratch, and since then he’s been a key figure in developing our nerdy niche field from the more transactional Comp & Ben to the growing field of Rewards that we see today. His career encompasses a variety of different angles on Rewards, from a union, to Mercer as a consultant, to Carlsberg and then the past 14 years he has spent with ISS. This is a company with more than 300.000 people and a profit margin just above 5%, so most of the episode is centered around working with Rewards in these conditions.

Spoiler alert: Bjørn begins by telling the story of ISS, incl. their unique company culture and core values; he even takes us through the impact of Covid-19 on their business. He provides examples of the many thousands of lives they touch on a daily basis and the sheer numbers are impressive: more than 100.000 recruitments per year.

At ISS they have two types of employees, Place Makers and Support Staff, the latter is what most companies would refer to as “white collar workers”, and once a year even the top management join the frontline staff as cleaners, etc. to understand the core of their business. Bjørn then continues to explain how their company culture is built on respect and how this also applies to the way they spend their budgets. He explains how they recruit and retain the most brilliant and proficient people possible, and how this makes for a very exciting Rewards environment.

In addition, Bjørn and Jon discuss how being a low profit margin industry impacts the company culture and internal decision-making and salary setting processes.

And of course they also touch upon the EU Pay Transparency Directive and how ISS will handle the implementation of this, including the change management task ahead, the challenges of using Excel as the primary tool and not least the challenge of ensuring pay equity across collective bargaining agreements with the Birmingham case as the worst-case scenario. They discuss the breadth of the project across many functions including HR, Finance and Legal.

CSRD reporting requirements also come up in the discussion, highlighting some of the challenges of reporting globally on fx pay gaps without factoring underlying cultural difference into the numbers, which leads to a chat about which numbers are relevant to compare on a global scale. Finally they philosophize on the future of Rewards post pay transparency.

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In this episode Jon is chatting with Søren Mieritz Anderson, a seasoned Global Reward Director, who has worked in both European-based and US-based global companies and subsidiaries. In the interview, they reflect on the various differences there are in the ways we work with Rewards on each side of the pond, and they also touch upon some of the implications of and experiences with pay transparency regulations and company policies.

Spoiler alert: Søren starts by reflecting on the birth of the Rewards discipline in the Nordics and his own road to our nerdy niche field. He then goes on to discuss some of the key differences of working with compensation and benefits in a European setting vs. an American setting, incl. the role of healthcare benefits and taxation. This leads our two Reward Nerds into a talk about Total Reward Statements and the impact of a strong brand on attraction and retention. We are also pampered with a short reflection on new ways of working with Global Rewards in the age of zoom calls and hybrid work models and a longer talk about pay equity, pay transparency and the role of unions and collective bargaining agreements. Søren shares his insights on how to work with varying degrees of transparency requirements across states and before the interview concludes they briefly return to the role of taxes in pay setting and how sales compensation is its own unique discipline.

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In this episode Jon is interviewing Keld Nielsen, who is Sr. Director, Total Rewards at Novo Nordisk and who's been instrumental in their journey toward internal Pay Transparency. On April 1, 2025, Novo Nordisk announced that they are launching their internal Pay Transparency program, which they have been working on even before the EU announced the Pay Transparency Directive, thus becoming a world's first within Pay Transparency. Keld is one of the Grand Old Men of the Rewards business in the Nordics and he shares his experience and expertise generously. He has been part of the impressive growth journey of Novo Nordisk for the past 18 years, increasing its number of employees from ca. 25.000 to more than 70.000 world-wide and during his time they have successfully concluded many exciting Reward projects.

Spoiler alert: In the episode, Keld talks about their Change Management process, their culture and the practical steps Novo Nordisk has taken through the years to make this possible. He touches upon how they handle "skills" in their pay setting processes, how they handle "expats" and "local plus", and what their plans for external transparency are. He also reveals the use of AI tools to support Reward work and philosophizes about how a smaller company, with less resources, should approach the road to Pay Transparency.

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In this episode Jon is interviewing Henrike von Platen, who is the founder of Fair Pay Innovation Lab (FPI). The interview is centered on Henrike's mission to ensure it will not take 200 years before we have pay equity - in Europe and the World. She tells the story of her journey from the years leading up to her founding the FPI in 2017 until today, where FPI is a renovned non-profit well on the way to achieve its goals.

Spoiler alert: On the way Henrike deep-dives into how companies can ensure their long-term goal of being fair paying employers rather than just quick fixing a current pay gap, she discusses the barriers and limitations of politics and why the real future of fair pay lies in the hands of the companies, and of course how companies can achieve the fair pay stamp of approval world-wide.

You can find Henrike and the Fair Pay Certification at https://www.fpi-lab.org/

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In this episode Jon is interviewing Alexander Gram Jensen from PayGap on the topic of tech and AI in Rewards and how software can make our work-lives easier and how it may potentially change the nature of our work as Rewards professionals. Naturally the topic of the upcoming Pay Transparency legislation and reporting requirements is also discussed, as is how to use AI and what to be aware of when using AI.

Alexander is the co-founder of PayGap, a brand-new pay equity software designed by Reward specialists, and he's a seasoned entrepreneur within IT and software that helps people solve real-life challenges.

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We were curious about some of the details of the EU Pay Transparency Directive and who better to ask than the chief nogotiator herself? Kira Marie Peter-Hansen was one of two chief negotiators bringing the Pay Transparency Directive to life and we had the pleasure of speaking with her directly on this topic, when she attended a roundtable we hosted in January 2024 with Rewards specialists from across the largest Nordic companies. Prior to the meeting, we had asked our LinkedIn followers what they were wondering after reading the Directive; these questions as well as key questions from the roundtable were recorded in this interview. It was first published on another channel in January 2024; however, as we are about to host a follow-up session on April 11, 2025, we thought it would be relevant to republish this first interview here on Reward Nerds. If you have any questions that you think we should ask Kira, when she visits us in a fortnight, please send us an email at [email protected].

Please note that Kira's advice does not constitute legal advice. Also, there were two corrections that we'd like to clarify: at timestamp 11:54 the correct number of years is eight for when evaluation of a directive begins and at timestamp 15:53 Kira meant to say "it's up for the judges to judge".

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We take a look at the timeline leading up to the EU Pay Transparency Directive, talk about women's suffrage across Europe and important international events within the area of pay equity. We also touch upon some of the things companies can do to prepare for the upcoming pay transparency legislation and why it is important to be ready when the implementation deadline of June 7, 2026, rolls around.

In this episode, our host, Jon Sannes, is once again joined by his colleague and co-partner, Marie, who in addition to being an in-house resource person in the field of pay transparency at Nordic Reward Partners is also somewhat of a history nerd. She has researched the timeline leading up to the EU Parliament's adoption of the Pay Transparency Directive.

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We deep-dive into the main themes of the EU pay transparency directive and discuss the implications it has on companies operating within the EU, especially the departments of Finance and HR including Rewards / Compensation & Benefits. We discuss the requirements as they are known now, pre-implementation, and how best to safeguard against a negative effect on the business.

This episode is hosted by Jon Sannes, and he is joined by Marie, who is also a partner at Nordic Reward Partners and an in-house resource person in the field of pay transparency.

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In this prequal we will briefly introduce ourselves and the Reward Nerds podcast. Jon Sannes is hosting the podcast and in this prequel he's joined by Marie, who is also a partner of Nordic Reward Partners.

The music used in this podcast is a piece called "New Funk" by the Ukrainian composer Vlad Gluschenko.

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