Nordic international locations are recognized for being completely satisfied, with excessive incomes, strong welfare help and easy accessibility to nature. Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Sweden are in actual fact the world’s 4 happiest international locations in keeping with the newest UN-sponsored World Happiness Report, with Norway coming in seventh.
It seems, many individuals are completely satisfied at work there too. Nordic-headquartered companies occupy ten areas on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For – Europe list, regardless of their international locations constituting beneath 4% of the continent’s inhabitants.
Denmark and Norway every have three of the highest 100—Novo Nordisk, Beierholm and JYSK for the previous; Sector Alarm, Norgehus and Reitan Retail for the latter—whereas Sweden has 4: Svea, Tre, Bengt Dahlgren and Sparbanken.
Is there one thing within the area’s glacial waters that companies in different components of the world can be taught from?
Erkko Autio, professor and chair in expertise venturing and entrepreneurship at Imperial School Enterprise College, factors to 4 distinguishing options. “Nordic companies are a lot much less hierarchical. That’s one factor. The second is that these are high-trust cultures that give workers a excessive stage of autonomy. Work life stability is the third issue. Lastly, there’s an emphasis on collaboration and consensus relatively than dictation,” he explains.
Anna Nivala, CEO of the Gothenburg department of Swedish civil engineering consultancy Bengt Dahlgren, says that Swedes joke that “[we’re] the one nation the place the coworkers make selections after which the CEO has to regulate. Democracy in that sense is essential, nevertheless it makes for a stable floor for psychological security when you may say to anybody what’s in your thoughts.”
The Nordic mannequin in observe
The 4 pillars of completely satisfied, Nordic corporations that Autio highlights—autonomy, low energy distance, work-life stability and collaboration—come as a bundle.
“Nordic companies are a lot much less hierarchical.”Erkko Autio, professor and chair in expertise venturing and entrepreneurship at Imperial School Enterprise College
A dedication to work-life stability, for instance, is important for empowerment, says Nivala. “When Bengt Dahlgren based the corporate 74 years in the past, he had a slogan {that a} hungry engineer was not a very good engineer, and he used to deal with his workers to blueberry pies and invite them to his home,” she says.
As we speak, there are “loads of small issues all the time that occur to make you are feeling that your private life additionally issues,” together with common fika—espresso and cake breaks the place groups get to know one another with out speaking about work—backed firm ski journeys, and lectures about mindfulness or stopping calendar creep.
This stage of caring and private openness—proudly owning errors is a part of being current as a complete particular person—filters into the enterprise tradition. “Sharing with one another that you just’re going via a divorce or having difficulties with this or that makes you belief one another extra,” Nivala explains.
It’s a well-known story within the Nordics. Danish pharma agency Novo Nordisk, which additionally makes the highest 100, is equally known for a culture the place workers name the CEO by their first identify, and don’t really feel strain to remain at work late.
Not for everybody
These rules—nonetheless virtuous—do include dangers. Autio factors to Nokia, Finland’s one-time big cell maker, for instance of the professionals and cons of the Nordic method.
Nokia began out in forestry and heavy industries earlier than pivoting to electronics within the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, later rising to dominate the worldwide cell phone market within the Nineties and early 2000s. On the time, it credited this place to its flat hierarchy, pushing decision-making nearer to prospects.
“Sharing with one another that you just’re going via a divorce or having difficulties with this or that makes you belief one another extra.”
Anna Nivala, CEO of the Gothenburg department of Bengt Dahlgren
However when the iPhone ushered within the smartphone period, the corporate couldn’t make the transition a second time and finally exited the market; it now focuses on telecommunications gear.
The much-dissected failure partly got here from strategic errors, however Autio additionally blames the corporate’s system of center administration committees: “The committees have been empowered to resolve which approaches to maneuver forward with. They ended up in a scenario the place the center managers saved voting down one another’s initiatives, and that lowered Nokia’s functionality to reply to trade change.”
That isn’t to say that consensus tradition prevents innovation or agility—Autio provides Sweden’s vibrant start-up sector as proof on the contrary. Nivala additionally says that when consensus is secured, issues have a tendency to maneuver sooner as a result of everyone seems to be aligned.
Getting the stability proper does take skilful execution. Maybe a very powerful—and apt—lesson from the Nordic corporations on this yr’s Best Companies to Work For – Europe list is that leaders can’t impose a collaborative tradition from the highest down.
“Usually you may suppose it’s the chief’s accountability, however you’ll want to discuss to each coworker about creating this type of atmosphere,” says Nivala. “It’s not simply what’s the boss going to do, it’s how are you going to contribute? And what do you’ll want to contribute?”
