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Swedish employers want good-looking staff: study

Swedish employers look for staff who are good-looking and not overweight, according to a new survey.

Published: 7 February 2011 16:01 CET

Six out of 10 Swedish employers desire “attractive” staff, according to a new study conducted by researcher Henrietta Huzell of Karlstad University in western Sweden, newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) reported on Monday.

In addition, seven out of 10 would rather not have overweight employees, the survey of 1,000 companies in Sweden, particularly those in the hotel and restaurant industries, found.

The study also found that 90 percent of employers said they want employees in good physical condition. However, appearance was also important, especially in the retail sector where nearly eight in 10 stated that it was significant, the report said.

Huzell, who has a PhD in work science, was surprised that the demands on staff appearance was so important. She believes that the findings may be due in part to the fact that appearance is perceived as a sign of health, the report said.

The recent study follows on previous research by Huzell from 2008 when she conducted a study that revealed that while having good-looking employees did not result in higher turnover, employers still cared a lot about the appearance of their workers, particularly in the hospitality industry.

“An increasing number of people are well educated and appearance and aesthetic skills have becomes more important,” Huzell said at the time.

However, the most important issue for businesses was not that the staff good-looking, but that they are sound and healthy, which has nothing with ideals regarding appearances.

“The requirement showed up in all sectors and is related to the employer being afraid of the costs associated with sick leave,” Huzell told news agency TT in 2008.

The responses for her previous study came from a total of about a thousand companies in the hotel and restaurant, retail and finance and insurance industries. It also showed that refined language among employees was more important to employers than outer beauty.

However, firms with high aesthetic demands on their employees are not more profitable than other companies, according to Sveriges Radio Värmland.

A separate study about ideal appearances based on questionnaires from a couple hundred companies in the country was compared to profitability figures from a business database.

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WORK

Drug and harassment allegations plunge Bejart Ballet into turmoil

Switzerland's prestigious Bejart Ballet Lausanne company faces a probe as allegations of drug use, harassment and abuse of power raise the question why nothing apparently changed after an earlier investigation raised similar issues.

Published: 13 June 2021 12:07 CEST
Drug and harassment allegations plunge Bejart Ballet into turmoil
Bejart Ballet dancers perform at Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" in the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, on April 3, 2013. credit: YURI KADOBNOV / AFP

The company, founded by the late legendary French choreographer Maurice Bejart, was placed under audit on June 4 over allegations touching on its “working environment and inappropriate behaviour”.

The Maurice Bejart Foundation announced the audit just a week after revealing that the affiliated Rudra Bejart ballet school had fired its
director and stage manager and suspended all classes for a year due to “serious shortcomings” in management.

While the foundation has revealed few details of the allegations facing the two institutions, anonymous testimonies gathered by trade union
representatives and the media paint a bleak picture.

Swiss public broadcaster RTS reported that a number of unidentified former members of the Bejart Ballet Lausanne (BBL) company had written to the foundation, describing the “omnipresence of drugs, nepotism, as well as psychological and sexual harassment”.

Many of the accusations allegedly focus on Gil Roman, who took the helm of BBL when its founder died in 2007.

Roman did not respond to AFP requests to the foundation or BBL seeking comment.

‘Denigration, humiliation’

The French choreographer faced similar allegations during a secret audit a year later, but was permitted to stay on and continue as before, according to RTS and the union representing the dancers.

“We cannot understand what might have been in that audit that would have allowed them to clear him completely,” Anne Papilloud, head of the SSRS union that represents stage performers in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, told AFP.

“The accusations back then were word-for-word the same as today: harassment, denigration, humiliation, insults, temper tantrums, drugs,” she said, citing former company members who had contacted the union in recent weeks and had said they were around during the 2008 audit.

One dancer told RTS on condition of anonymity that it was common for Roman to publicly humiliate dancers who made a misstep, while another said he often asked dancers to bring him marijuana.

“Drugs were part of everyday life at Bejart Ballet,” the broadcaster reported her saying.

Papilloud meanwhile told AFP that the “vast majority of the testimonies I have heard have been about psychological harassment”.

Drug-use had been mentioned, mainly linked to how the drugs “provoked outbursts of anger”, she said.

She said she had also heard a small number of complaints about sexual harassment, although not involving Roman.

‘Terror’

But what stood out most in the dozens of accounts she had heard in recent weeks was the sheer “terror” people described.

Their reaction to what they had been through was “extremely strong”, she said, “almost at the level of post-traumatic stress”.

Papilloud said that as a union representative she had long been aware that BBL was considered a difficult place to work, with low pay compared to the industry standard and little respect for working hours.

But the recent revelations of “an extremely toxic working environment” had come as a shock, she said.

Over 30 current and former BBL members had contacted the union following the upheaval at the Rudra Bejart ballet school, she said.

The school, which halted classes and fired its long-time director Michel Gascard and stage manager Valerie Lacaze, his wife, was reportedly fraught with psychological abuse and tyrannical over-training.

One student described how she had found herself surrounded by teachers and other students who “humiliated and belittled” her, the president of the foundation’s board, Solange Peters, told RTS.

One teacher present at the time reportedly compared the scene to a “lynching”.

The revelations about the school appeared to have “opened a Pandora’s Box”, spurring alleged victims of similar abuse at BBL to come forward, according to Papilloud.

“We have really been inundated,” she said, adding that many hope that “this time, things can change”.

Following close communication with the foundation, the union too is hopeful that the current audit will be handled differently than the last one, with more openness and independence, Papilloud said.

“I think this will not be an audit where things are swept under the carpet.”

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