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9 Sep 2020 – Articles

Head of HR will ensure stronger culture and wellbeing

As a part of Danske Bank’s plan to become a ‘Better Bank’, Karsten Breum, Head of Group HR, joined the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) in August. With the new ELT member, Karsten Breum and his team will drive the people agenda to ensure engaged employees, strong leadership and wellbeing.

Karsten Breum joined Danske Bank in February 2020 and is responsible for the bank’s HR-activities. With Karsten’s new role in the Executive Leadership Team, he is looking at an important and highly prioritised task in ensuring a stronger wellbeing and culture in Danske Bank.

“As a member of the Executive Leadership Team, my most important priorities will be ensuring that we have a culture that is characterised by responsibility, leadership, and a high level of performance, and that Danske Bank is a place where people are motivated, happy, and feel that they have mandate to make decisions in their daily work,” Karsten Breum says.


Karsten Breum shares his main priorities

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Simple, pragmatic and impactful
Despite Karsten Breum's relatively short time in Danske Bank, he is in no doubt about his priorities. He will, among other things, focus on ensuring a close link between the employee strategy and the business strategy. “The way we should drive our culture and employee agenda is very clear: It should be simple, pragmatic, and impactful. Providing support and mandate and ensuring that everyone feels capable of driving and delivering on our promises to our customers are extremely important factors,” says Karsten Breum.

Diversity and inclusion will be two crucial principles in Karsten Breum’s future work with the bank’s culture. “There are many grey areas and many “what-if”-questions that we are working to answer. Our rules are not set in stone yet, and there is not much to lean on out there in Denmark, so we take the revolution one step at a time. Diversity and inclusion are important principles for us - so we will dive into the nuances and fix the practical details afterwards.”