The key to a good HR function at Northern Lights
Northern Lights began working with BUHR on the basis that they needed to have a clear HR framework in place for the organization during a critical growth phase. For them, strong professional expertise and flexibility in services were essential to achieving their goals of further development and growth.
Northern Lights is building the world's first carbon transport and storage infrastructure. The company was established in 2020 with the main goal of being able to transport and permanently store CO2, and in 2021 became the operator of Norway's first CO2 storage license. As part of the Langskip project, Northern Lights will start transporting and storing CO2 from Heidelberg Materials in 2025. In 2023, Northern Lights entered into two commercial agreements with Yara in the Netherlands and Ørsted in Denmark to store 800,000 and 400,000 tonnes of CO2 annually, respectively.
Northern Lights is a joint venture established for CO2 transport and storage, and is owned by Equinor, Shell, and TotalEnergies. They have a focus on sustainable solutions, and are part of the government's commitment to a full-scale CCS value chain.
The challenges before the collaboration with BUHR
Birthe Nylund Sundt, CFO of Northern Lights, talks about the challenges the company faced at the beginning, and how the collaboration with BUHR became the solution;
– When Northern Lights was founded in 2020, I had several responsibilities and roles, in addition to what naturally fell under the CFO role. We were a small start-up company in rapid growth, where I had many different functions internally, says Birthe Sundt, CFO at Northern Lights.
As CFO, she had to handle finance, HR, IT and contracts, without being an HR expert. Northern Lights also didn’t want to hire anyone until they had a clear HR framework in place.
Northern Lights therefore issued a request for HR services to explore the opportunities in the market.
Nina Gulsrud, HR Manager at BUHR, explains in more detail about the collaboration with Northern Lights;
– We function as a full-fledged HR department, staffed with employees with both broad and varied expertise, as well as extensive experience in the HR field. We quickly discovered that Northern Lights understood that by using BUHR, they gained access to an entire HR department, while also gaining an experienced HR business partner who acted as their permanent contact. Our HR business partner has the opportunity to draw on the necessary expertise from BUHR when needed, and ensures that the customer is always up to date in accordance with employment legislation.
With a growing team and increasing demands on internal routines, it was important to have an experienced partner in place who could deliver comprehensive HR solutions from day one.
– We wanted an HR partner with access to strong professional expertise and experience in several disciplines. A lot had to be done in a short time, and we didn't want to hire anyone until we knew we had the framework for HR in place, such as procedures, payroll system and personnel handbook, points out the CFO of Northern Lights.
Scalable HR solution
BUHR therefore started collaborating with Northern Lights in connection with putting an HR framework in place.
Birthe Nylund Sundt in Northern Lights elaborates;
– What was unique about BUHR was the subscription model that could easily be scaled up to our organizational needs. This flexible offering was crucial to being able to handle the HR-related tasks in an early phase. We started with 40%, and quickly went up to 60% and then 80%. This scalability has been important to us.
The HR function and services from BUHR developed significantly, and were crucial for Northern Lights to further develop the company. Here, BUHR ensured adaptation along the way.
– When Northern Lights needed to scale up, we deployed additional resources and adapted them to the tasks that needed to be solved. We are committed to building a team that is tailored to the customer, says Nina Gulsrud, HR Manager at BUHR.
A collaboration that delivers concrete results and value
Sundt at Northern Lights describes that they have grown from two to twenty-five permanent employees in less than three years, a significant growth supported through the HR services BUHR offers.
– It is definitely a unique collaboration that works excellently in practice. BUHR is now our HR function, and has a way of being that makes them function as part of the organization. Employees feel that they can go directly to them with questions and concerns. They function as an integrated part of our organization, and have, among other things, assisted with the development of our HR function, with annual wheels and employee surveys as important milestones, says Sundt.
In addition to this, they take care of Northern Lights' HR function by, among other things, preparing procedures and work environment surveys, assisting with recruitment and follow-up of employees; including salary, leave, sick leave follow-up, pension, insurance and other conditions. BUHR also provides general advice and guidance within the HR area to both managers and employees.