About the report
There is a great need for knowledge about the factors behind a sustainable and healthy working life. The Swedish Agency for Work Environment Expertise (SAWEE) has therefore conducted analyses based on newly collected data from the Swedish business sector on a healthy and good work environment. In this report, the agency presents the results of the analyses in our recent 2019–2020 survey, together with a comparison with three previous surveys on work organisation and learning at work carried out by Statistics Sweden in 2009 and the Swedish Work Environment Authority in 2012 and 2015. As a background, this report presents the state of knowledge on health factors through short summaries of the latest information on the subject.
The Swedish Work Environment Authority has generously shared data from the two baseline surveys about the work organisationand work environment management in 2012 and 2015, respectively. Statistics Sweden collected the survey data and contributed to the first Swedish Meadow survey (2009) and the technical report attached to this publication. Through Microdata Online Access (MONA), Statistics Sweden has provided complementing register-based statistics.
The authors of the report
This report is written by Annette Nylund, Lic Philosophical in industrial work science and Bachelor’s degree in economics and political science, as a senior analyst at the Swedish Agency for Work Environment Expertise. She has also carried out the calculations in the report’s analysis section. With Hans-Olof Hagén, PhD in Economics and senior consultant, Annette Nylund has summarised the sub-section on the quality of the four included surveys.
Hans-Olof Hagén carried out the non-response analysis in the appendix. Jakob Johannesson, Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, and Petter Samuelsson, MSc in Economics and Bachelor’s degree in Statistics, both data science consultants at Solita AB, were responsible for database management. Mikael Nordenmark, Professor of Rehabilitation Science, Department of Health Sciences (HOV) at Mid Sweden University in Östersund, conducted a quality review of the report.
Background
Our task is to be responsible for knowledge building and dissemination as well as evaluation and analysis to contribute to knowledge about the working environment used in practice. In particular, our mission includes following and analysing developments in the work environment to strengthen knowledge, analysis, and evaluation work.
In the fall of 2020, we conducted an electronic survey about work organization and work environment work before the 2019 pandemic, as well as some general questions about work environment measures taken in 2020. Companies and public organisations answered the survey, forming the basis for indicators and analysis at the organizational level.
Questionnaire responses from company management on learning and work organization, and work environment work are combined with register data on company structure and education and personnel structure. Approximately 2,500–3,000 companies are included in the analyses, depending on how the studied issue is defined. The project conducts studies within several themes presented in individual reports that are published continuously during the project period up to and including the year 2023.
The aim
The results will be presented in a report per theme, and the assignment is divided into different themes. Publication of the reports takes place continuously during the project period.
- The healthy and good working environment during the last decade
- Analyses of work environment management including the use of external resources, for example, occupational health care
- Relationship between work organization and other factors (for example, the company’s performance and working conditions)