The Founder
The founder of The Birch Tree, Jorgen Pedersen, made the decision to create this niche-based boutique start-up while he was the Group Vice President Compensation & Benefits and International Mobility for a major international group with 170.000 employees in 70 countries.
His combination of experiences from Finance to General Management to Human Resources to Rewards makes it possible to deliver solutions, which are both people and business focused, as well as financially solid.
He has lived and worked in 5 countries on 3 continents during his career. Always enjoying the cultural aspects which are so important, when you wish to add value to the local needs, expectations and conditions. Based on this we can offer our services in English, French, German and the Scandinavian languages. And certainly adjusted to align corporate and country needs.
Having worked on the whole range of rewards, he is convinced that delivering customer-focused benefits solutions is where you can touch and impact the life of most people. At the same time creating a sustainable and socially responsible purpose. Based on this he decided to become a founder in order to work with companies to materialize this idea, while in parallel working with NGO’s to create a long term development in social responsibility.
Jorgen came into Rewards from a role of HR director for a major region with 19.000 employees, in order to create customer focus and internationalization in this function. Before joining the Human resources function, he was Vice President and General Manager of international businesses, where he and his teams grew the businesses via technology development, co-development and international expansion. He joined the HR function to inject a business minded focus. He had a background as Financial Director before becoming a General Manager. In parallel he has been acting as member of the board of directors of various companies.
Case study: In his rewards role he drove the development of a global employee benefits management program. This gives transparency and governance to the business, and is adding double digit millions of Euros to the bottom line. In parallel he led the development of solutions for benefits choice for the employees in many countries. This is creating a higher level of employee satisfaction and engagement. He also managed the implementation of a new Care program. This gives all worldwide employees and their families a guaranteed level of benefits. These social protection floors contribute to the ESG agenda, especially to the S for social aspects. Together these solutions are seen as a strategic and holistic way to use employee benefits to deliver to the expectations of employees, business and external stakeholders.
