On 11 February 2021, the Swedish government presented its new “good working environment” Strategy for the years 2021–2025 (En god arbetsmiljö för framtiden – regeringens arbetsmiljöstrategi 2021-2025). The strategy sets out the goals, its implementation objectives and follow-up.

Besides the strategy, that gives a new role to health and safety authorities to develop specific targeted action plans, the government intends to maintain a tripartite dialogue with social partners on those matters. This dialogue will take place in the so-called “Government’s work environment forum”. 

The overall goal of the working environment strategy is achieving “good working conditions and opportunities for development at work for both women and men”, as well as building a “work environment that prevents ill health and accidents, and prevents people from being excluded from work and [...] which contributes to the development of both individuals and businesses”.

The four pillars of the working environment strategy are as follows:

• A sustainable working life - everyone must be able to work a full working life.
• A healthy working life - working life must contribute to development and well-being.
• A safe working life - no one should risk life or health due to the job.
• A labour market without crime and fraud - a deficient work environment should never be a means of competition.

As part of the first pillar, the strategy underlines the importance of skills and long-life training to be able to maintain work throughout the working life.

The second pillar requires that the “work environment must contribute to a positive exchange in the form of a rich work content, job satisfaction, community and personal development”. Such a work environment and healthy workplace may contribute to health and profitability for companies.  

Examples of such a healthy workplace are security at work, support and opportunities for career development, increased responsibility, autonomy, and co-determination.

Interestingly, the Government’s document reports the lack of knowledge on the importance of the work environment for production, growth, and innovation and that more work needs to be done to develop the positive factors towards a good workplace where health and profitability go hand in hand. 

With the aim of building a “healthy working life”, the paper emphasises how social dialogue and a dialogue with workers’ representatives is key.

The Strategy echoes the European Pillar of Social Rights and is in line with the future EU Strategic Framework on Health and Safety at Work. The framework is a European Commission initiative that intends to update the previous EU Strategic Framework 2014-2020 and aims at “maintaining and improving high OSH standards for workers across the European Union, also in the light of new circumstances and the need to prepare for upcoming new crisis and threats, by reducing accidents at work and work-related diseases and by mobilising Member States and stakeholders around common priorities to achieve this. It aims at providing a political policy framework to improve OSH at both national and EU level”. Such a framework ensures coherence among EU Member State policies and its adoption is expected in the second half of 2021.

The Confederation of Swedish Enterprises, underlines how “in Sweden, there is a high standard in terms of work environment. The work of improving health and safety is an ongoing work and the companies continuously improve their routines for working with both physical risks and organizational and socialrisks”. According to Ola Brinnen, Senior Legal Advisor at the Confederation of Swedish Enterprises, “as per the current legislation, the employer is responsible for the working environment and occupational health and safety at the workplace. Despite this, the new strategy lacks a clear employer’s perspective. The strategy has a focus on increased responsibility, more penalty fees, and additional rules for employers. We don’t think new legislation and penalties is the right way to go. We think that a better way would be to make it easier for the companies to implement existing legislation and to simplify companies' ability to understand and comply with existing legislation. For example, by sharing practical guidelines and tailor-made support adapted to micro and small enterprises in particular”.