In Focus
Bus drivers – a dying occupation as Finland goes for digitalised transport?
Finnish commuters are facing a very different journey to work in the future. Many transport sector jobs can disappear, or at least change. New traffic legislation aims to make transport services more flexible, based on the sharing economy and call control. And the self-driving robot buses are just around the corner.
Joint Finnish-Swedish project develops businesses in the archipelago
The three year long project starts in October. It will develop small businesses in the Finnish and Swedish archipelago, across borders and disciplines. The aim is to create new businesses, new knowledge and new clusters of cooperation, where digital opportunities play an important role.
The Nordic model under pressure from new leadership methods
New management models are threatening a long tradition of collective decision making within Nordic labour life, Nordic researchers say. Employees loose influence and their chance to cooperate to reach constructive solutions within organisations and businesses.
Nordic countries top of global trust league
The Nordic countries are top of the world when it comes to trust. This means people dare to cooperate, which benefits the economy a great deal. And from trust more trust is born.
Trust makes the workplace more innovative
Signe Jarvad is the boss of 60 employees at Copenhagen’s Leisure and Culture Administration and not afraid of making decisions. But not without sounding out all relevant parties, and she also leaves many of the decisions to the employees. She believes this has led to higher work satisfaction and more innovation.
The City of Copenhagen: Work based on trust, not control
Managing and leading public sector jobs using trust can help solve the complex challenges facing the Nordic welfare states, believes a researcher behind a new study on the Copenhagen trust reform. She challenges the Nordics to share experiences of trust-based management and leadership.
”Trade unions must organise people working though platforms”
The sharing economy represents a challenge to the labour market as we know it. In the face of this development, the Swedish trade union Unionen has just entered an agreement with German IG Metall. The aim is to find tools for how to organise the growing part of the labour force which works through online platforms.
The core idea of labour law is under threat
The core idea of labour law is to protect the weaker party in an employment relation. This is increasingly under attack from market-led thinking where the main aim is to create opportunities for everyone to get a job.
Sharing economy glossary
The new way of organising the selling of services can be confusing, and so too the accompanying terminology. Here is a short glossary for the most common expressions.
Can the Nordic model survive the sharing economy?
The sharing economy, where customers use the Internet to find providers of different services without using physical middlemen, is also a threat to the Nordic model which builds on collective agreements. Employers and employees are forming non-contract relationships within a growing number of trades. If there is a contract, it mostly states that the partners cannot be considered to be employer or employee.
Young workers at greater risk of psychological ill health
Many young workers in the Nordic countries live dangerously in the workplace, according to a new Nordic report. The risk for physical injury as well as psychological ill health is considerably higher among young workers compared to older ones.
A top psychological working environment on the Danish island of Lolland
Employees should be whistling when they go to work and when they go home again. That is the ambition at the Center for Social Indsats (Centre for Social Measures) – a municipal workplace employing 275 people on the Danish island of Lolland. And there are many reasons to whistle contently: their psychological working environment has been named the best in Denmark.
Many Danish municipalities seek help to improve psychological working environments
A newly formed group of consultants will be helping municipalities improve employees’ psychological working environments. There is great interest in getting support.
Working women’s psychological ill health made worse by uneven structures
There has been a strong increase in work-related psychological ill health in Sweden in recent years. People working in the health, education and care sector are particularly exposed. But this is not only a Swedish phenomenon. The same development can be found in all developed economies, and hardest hit are women and youths.
Job boredom – a taboo subject
There is a lot of talk about burnout in the workplace. But there is not much serious debate about being bored at work. Yet these repetitive, grey days can dramatically influence work capacity and efficiency.
Sick leave down by 40 percent after focus on attendance
The Norwegian municipality of Songdalen went against the grain in order to cut the level of sick leave. They concentrated on attendance instead of absence, and used the staff’s own knowledge about their working environment with great success.
Refugees can become an engine of growth
Many types of voluntary organisations played an important role when Sweden received a record number of refugees last autumn. There are many challenges, but with successful integration many municipalities consider refugees to be the solution to the future need of labour.
Can Nordic refugee policies be coordinated?
The large number of refugees arriving in the Nordic countries is having consequences for Nordic cooperation. This is the theme for the Nordic Council’s session in Oslo. New border obstacles have emerged, and if the refugee situation is handled very differently in the different Nordic countries it could have grave consequences.
Danish businesses to train refugees for jobs
Less than one in three refugees in Denmark finds work after three years. Now the government and the social partners want to change this by introducing a two year integration education programme in the workplace.
Defining Sweden's feminist foreign policy
Sweden’s feminist government wants to use its foreign policy to promote women’s and girl's rights, representation and resources based on the reality in which they live. What exactly a feminist foreign policy means is hard to define, but the perspective should permeate everything the foreign ministry and the diplomatic missions to.
Document Actions
Follow us on Facebook
