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After graduating from secondary school, Henkel trained as a businessman in the shipping company "Kühne & Nagel". He then studied at the Hamburg University of Economics and Politics. From 1962, Henkel was initially employed in production at IBM in Germany. There he completed an in-house training program within two years. Henkel quickly worked his way up at IBM. A total of 17 years abroad followed, during which he held key international positions in the USA, East Asia, Germany and at the European headquarters in Paris. In 1982, Henkel became vice president of IBM Europe. Three years later he was appointed deputy chairman of IBM Germany. In 1987 he accepted the call to become chairman of the company where he had started his meteoric career as a trainee 25 years earlier. In 1993 he was promoted to IBM head of Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
In 1994, the previous head of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), Tyll Necker, was looking for a successor. He ultimately nominated Henkel, who took up the position of President of the Federation of German Industries in 1995. He held the office until 2001. Henkel became a member of the supervisory boards of IBM Germany, Daimler Aerospace AG, Audi AG, econia.com AG, Bayer AG, EPG AG, SMS GmbH and Riegler AG. He also became a personal member of the board of the Donors' Association for German Economy and a senator of the Max Planck Society. In 1991, Henkel was awarded the "Karmarsch Memorial Coin" by the TU Hannover. The Technical University of Dresden awarded Henkel an honorary doctorate in 1992. In the same year he was honored as "Ecomanager of the Year 1992" by the Worldwide Fund of Nature (WWF) and the well-known business magazine "Capital". He earned the title due to remarkable ecological measures at IBM Germany. In 1992, Henkel also received the German Business Innovation Prize from the magazine Wirtschaftswoche.
In 1998, Henkel was awarded the "Southern Cross" by the President of Brazil. In 1999 he was awarded the "Order of the Sacred Treasure" by the Emperor of Japan. In 2000 he was inducted into the French Legion of Honor as a "commandeur". In 2001, Henkel became president of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Scientific Association. When he left the Leibniz Association in 2005, a new species of butterfly was named after him, the "Bracca olafhenkeli" and the "Hans Olaf Henkel Prize for Science Policy", which is awarded every two years. Henkel has been an honorary professor at the University of Mannheim since 2001, where he teaches "International Management". In 2001 he was awarded the Cicero Speaker's Prize from the Publishing House for German Economics. His publications include titles such as "Now or Never. An Alliance for the Sustainability of Politics" from 1998, "The Power of Freedom" from 2000 and "The Ethics of Success. Rules of the Game for a Globalized Society". the year 2002.
In 2002, Henkel refused to accept the Federal Cross of Merit awarded to him for reasons of Hanseatic tradition. In 2003 he received the Ludwig Erhard Prize for business journalism and the "Corine" International Book Prize for the book "The Ethics of Success". As a fighter for the interests of German business owners, the President of the Federation of German Industries, Hans-Olaf Henkel, was always critical of the economic policies of both the government and the opposition. For Henkel, industrial companies and medium-sized businesses have the task and ability to create jobs compared to politicians. For him, this is associated with an increase in competition and a reduction in welfare state support in globalized growth. Henkel made a name for itself above all as a controversial representative of interests who dedicated himself exclusively to the cause, without regard to people, officials or party members. He vehemently represented the interests of German businesses at home and abroad. Michael Rogowski took over as President of the BDI in 2001.
In the fall of 2004, Henkel's book "The Power of New Beginnings. Germany is Feasible" was published, in which he combined economic neoliberalism with cultural and social conservatism and thus helped to express the prevailing worldview of Germany's current economic elite. On the occasion of the 200th birthday of the Danish poet Hans Christian Andersen in 2005, Hans-Olaf Henkel was appointed "Fairy Tale Ambassador" to promote the work of the "abc Foundation" against illiteracy. In 2006, Henkel received, among other things, the "Deutsche Mittelstandspreis" from the ''markt intern'' publishing house. In 2007 he received the Hayek Medal. In the same year his book entitled "Battle for the Middle" was published. My Confession to Citizenship" is his sixth non-fiction book. Henkel is a member of Amnesty International.
