stop smoking: modern Swedish companies pamper their employees in a bid to combat one of Europe’s highest absenteeism rates. Swedish companies are faced with a paradox. Their employees claim to be happy in their jobs yet they don’t hesitate to call in sick often, backed up by strong collective labor agreements that protect employees’ rights.
As a result Sweden’s large multinational corporations like Scania, Ericsson and Volvo and hip sectors such as consultancies and IT companies do whatever they can to attract employees and keep them happy in the workplace.
Some companies bring a masseur to the office to help staff get rid of back and shoulder pain, while others offer gym memberships or free breakfasts and fruit baskets in the office.
“And nobody would imagine that the fruit basket would ever be withdrawn, even though there are always people who complain that the fruit is not fresh enough or not organic,” says Olga Cara, an employee at the state-run certification agency Swedac.
“It’s very common in Sweden to care about the employees,” adds Lars Jilmstad, a spokesman for the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise.
“When you’re happier, when you’re more satisfied with your working conditions, then you perform at work,” says Magnus Verke, a psychology professor at Stockholm University.
But employers aren’t just being nice. A a driving factor is that healthy and happy employees take fewer sick days and are therefore more productive.
Equally important is a government incentive that offers employers generous tax breaks for efforts to keep employees healthy in a bid to reduce the burden on the health care sector.
The tax break applies for example to gym memberships, yoga classes and weight loss or quitting smoking programs.
In Sweden, which has a workforce of around 4.34 million, including 65 percent in the private sector, the number of people absent due to sickness remains the highest in the European Union, at 2.9 percent compared to an average of 1.6 percent — outdone only by non-EU member Norway at 3.4 percent.
Scania, the world’s leading heavy truck manufacturer based in Sweden, has studied the problem closely.
“Today our absenteeism rate is below five percent, which is very low for a en engineering industry company where the rate is normally about 10 to 20 percent,” says Scania spokesman Hans-Aake Danielsson.
