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Sweden has fourth happiest workers in the world: report

Sweden is home to the fourth happiest workers in the world, an international survey from the branding research firm Universum has claimed.

Published: 2 December 2016 15:15 CET
Updated: 2 December 2016 16:49 CET

Sweden has fourth happiest workers in the world: report

Is Swedish fika the secret? Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

The firm’s ‘Global Workforce Happiness Index’ concluded that Sweden has the world’s fourth most satisfied employees, behind Nordic neighbours Denmark and Norway, and Costa Rica.

“Generally we see that Swedish companies are good at meeting the needs of today's talents,” Petter Granqvist, marketing manager for Universum in Sweden, explained to The Local.

“They are good at taking care of their employees, but also at looking at each employee's personal needs. We have a tradition of including several in the decision-making and usually not too strong hierarchies.”

Sweden is famous for its work-life balance, including five weeks' holidays, generous parental leave, paid sick leave – including for parents staying at home to look after sick children – and so on.

However, there has also been increased debate in the past year about the situation for foreign workers, who often struggle to find work and when they do, face a long wait to get or extend their work permits.

READ ALSO: Danish workers happiest in the world

The survey asked more than 200,000 young professionals in 57 markets to rank their satisfaction, their willingness to recommend their current employer to others and their likelihood to switch jobs in the near future. The latter was an area where Sweden scored low, compared to the other criteria.

“We see in the survey that Swedes are not very loyal to their employers, and that could be seen as something many companies need to take seriously,” said Granqvist.

“If you don't take it seriously, there's a great risk you will lose your best talents and the company's perhaps most important capital: the human capital.”

Universum's survey comes a week after another report showed that Swedes are the citizens in Europe expected to work the largest number of years during their lives, with the predicted 41.2 working years the longest in the European Union. So it is probably a good thing they are happy workers.

Photo: Universum

'Reassess your cultural background': Key tips for foreign job hunters in Sweden

One international worker who found it hard to land her first job in Sweden is Amanda Herzog, who eventually founded Intertalents in Sweden with the aim of helping other immigrants find work in the country.

Herzog originally came to Sweden to study at Jönköping University and decided to stay after graduating.

“I thought it would take three months, maybe six months to find a job, I was prepared for that,” she told The Local during a live recording of our Sweden in Focus podcast held as part of Talent Talks, an afternoon of discussions at the Stockholm Business Region offices on how to attract and retain foreign workers in Sweden.

“What happened was it took over 13 months and 800 applications to actually get a job in my industry, within marketing.”

During this time, Herzog was getting multiple interviews a month, but was not getting any further in the process, despite showing her CV to Swedish recruiters for feedback.

“They were baffled as well,” she said. “By the time I landed my dream job, I had to go outside of the typical advice and experiment, and figure out how I actually can get hired. By the time I got hired, I realised what actually works isn’t really being taught.”

‘Reassess your cultural background’

Often, those who come to Herzog for help have sent out hundreds of CVs and are unsure what their next steps should be.

“My first piece of advice is to stop for a second,” she said. “Reassess your cultural background and how it fits into Sweden.”

Herzog, for example, discovered she was interviewing in “the American way”.

In the US, when asked to tell an interviewer about yourself, you’d be expected to discuss your career history – how many people have you managed? Did sales improve while you were working there? – while Swedes are more likely to want to know about you as a person and why you want to work in a specific role for their company in particular.

“A lot of people don’t know this, so imagine all of the other cultural things that they’re doing differently that they learned in their country is normal,” Herzog adds.

“Just start with learning, because it could be that you don’t need to change very much, you are qualified, you just need to connect with the Swedish way of doing things.”

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Networking is important

“Don’t hesitate to reach out for help and guidance,” said Laureline Vallée, an environmental engineer from France who recently found a job in Sweden after moving here nine months ago with her partner, who got a job as a postdoc at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

“You tend to insulate yourself and consider yourself not capable, but you’re not less capable than you were in your home country, you just need to explain it to the employers.”

Another tip is to network as much as you can, Vallée said.

“Networking is really important here in Sweden, so just go for it, connect with people in the same field.”

This could be through networks like Stockholm Akademiska Forum’s Dual Career Network, which helps the accompanying partners or spouses of foreign workers find a job in Sweden, or through other connections, like neighbours, friends, or people you meet through hobbies, for example.

Make a clear profile for yourself

Another common issue is that applicants are not presenting themselves clearly to recruiters, Stockholm Akademiska Forum’s CEO, Maria Fogelström Kylberg, told The Local.

“If you’re sending 600 applications without an answer, something is wrong. We have seen many people looking for jobs working in a supermarket, and the next application is a managing director post,” she said. “You have to decide ‘who am I? What do I want to do?’, you have to profile yourself in a clear way.”

This could be editing down your CV so you’re not rejected for being overqualified, or just thinking more closely about how you present yourself to a prospective employer.

“Which of my skills are transferable? How can I be of use to this company? Not what they can do for me, but what problem can I solve with my competence?”

Job hunters should also not be afraid of applying for a job which lists Swedish as a requirement in the job description, Fogelström Kylberg said.

“Sometimes if I see an ad for a job and I have a perfect candidate in front of me, I call the company and say ‘I have a perfect candidate, but you need them to speak Swedish’, they then say ‘no, that’s not so important’. This is not so unusual at all so don’t be afraid of calling them to say ‘do I really need perfect Swedish?’”

Listen to the full interview with Maria Fogelström Kylberg, Amanda Herzog and Laureline Vallée in The Local’s Sweden in Focus Extra podcast for Membership+ subscribers.

Interview by Paul O’Mahony, article by Becky Waterton

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