Ingka Group | How Ikea's largest retailer runs total rewards for a global workforce of more than 160,000 people

Konstantinos Karavidas, Group Total Rewards Manager for Ingka Group has spent 20 years learning the ins and outs of Nordic multinationals across a range of industries, having worked for Maersk, Danske Bank, Novo Nordisk, Chr. Hansen (now Novonesis), and since 2019, Ingka Group, which is IKEA's largest franchisee holding company.

Ahead of his appearance on stage at Unleash World, Karavidas offered a peek beneath the hood of his first and most formidable task in the role: defining and delivering Ingka Group's total reward strategy. 

The non-negotiables 

"Nothing is eternal, and finding a good enough balance between what is global, what is local, what is a company decision, and what is an employee decision, was a real dilemma. We decided to focus on what truly matters to us, what describes us as a company and what is essential to our culture." 

Karavidas described these essentials as his red lines, deliverables which looked and acted the same in every one of Ingka Group's 32 markets.