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.

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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