Summary

Jens Hovgaard Jensen, Vice President of People and Culture at ECCO Americas, joins host Barb Bidan on The Human Element for a candid conversation about HR's future in the age of AI. Drawing on a career built from turnarounds and carve-outs at Maersk, Girteka Logistics, and ECCO, plus ten years as an officer in the Royal Danish Life Guards, Jens makes a provocative case: HR should actively eliminate its own transactional work with AI before someone else does it, treat restructuring as a chance to lead with humanity, and stop over-planning the workforce in favor of higher-value analytics. It is a practical, occasionally uncomfortable listen for HR and people leaders who want to move from administrative function to true business partner.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome and Jens's path from the Royal Danish Life Guards

02:35 The military through line: plan, then pivot

06:35 Closing 75 stores across three countries

07:45 Why ECCO gave people notice in November

10:45 HR sawing the branch it sits on

16:15 From transactional HR to true business peer

19:55 Where AI is already quietly removing HR work

23:00 Plan less, elevate the workforce analytics

29:25 The broken benefits model and vendor AI roadmaps

32:35 Lightning round and the final word

Takeaways

• Treating people with dignity during a restructuring is also good business. ECCO told staff in November about January store closures and saw low turnover, not a wave of early exits.
• "Working yourself out of a job" is a career accelerator, not a risk. Eliminating your own repetitive work tends to get you promoted into bigger problems, not pushed out.
• HR should drive its own AI adoption before someone else does. The transactional, administrative identity is exactly the work AI should absorb.
• Never spend more than 20 to 30 percent of your time planning. You need the other 70 percent for execution, and over-granular workforce plans rarely survive contact with reality.
• The real AI prize in HR is the analytics humans could never do well before, from predicting attrition to running M&A due diligence to challenging your own assumptions.

  
  

Connect with the Guest

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jensjensen42/
Website: https://us.ecco.com

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