Mid Sweden University

Projekt syftade till: 

1.     Att skapa fördjupad kunskap om hur medarbetarengagemang, ledarskap, sociala- och organisatoriska faktorer påverkas av övergången till aktivitetsbaserat arbete med inslag av hemarbete. Vidare syftade projektet till att longitudinellt studera medarbetarnas upplevelser av den fysiska och psykosociala arbetsmiljön samt sitt välbefinnande. 

2.     Att skapa fördjupad kunskap om metoder för att stärka känslan av sammanhang (meningsfullhet, hanterbarhet och begriplighet) för samtliga medarbetare i kommunen ur ett salutogent perspektiv. 

3.     Att studera hur kommunen kan stärka medarbetares kunskap och attityder om delaktighet i kommunens styrning och organisering. 

4.     Att studera hur kommunens arbetsgivarstrategi kan bidra till att skapa attraktion för kommunen som arbetsgivare och på så vis attrahera framtida arbetskraft med relevanta kompetenser. 

5.     Att genom kunskap från insamlad information skapa underlag för strategiska åtgärder med syfte att stärka medarbetarengagemang, känslan av sammanhang samt generell fysisk, social och organisatorisk arbetsmiljö. 

Projektets övergripande syfte har varit att ge fördjupad förståelse av medarbetarskapets betydelse gällande offentliga arbetsgivares attraktivitet. Skillnader mellan olika offentliga verksamheter gällande medarbetares benägenhet att rekommendera organisationer som attraktiva arbetsgivare samt interna och externa faktorers betydelse har studerats. Resultat från projektet kan ligga till grund för åtgärder med syfte att stärka den studerade organisationens arbetsgivarvarumärke samt bidra med kunskap för chefer och HR-avdelningar för att kunna skapa en attraktiv och hälsofrämjande arbetsmiljö och positiva värderingar bland ledare och medarbetarbetare.  I projektet har olika metoder syftande till att nå fördjupad förståelse av de identifierade forskningsfrågorna. 

Background: Municipal employees in Sweden often describe their work as meaningful and socially valuable yet carried out under complex psychosocial conditions. While intrinsic motivation and a sense of public contribution are recognized as protective factors for wellbeing, the public sector is also characterized by limited resources, high workloads, and bureaucratic distance. Understanding how employees perceive and navigate these psychosocial dynamics is essential for promoting sustainable engagement and mental health. This study explores how municipal employees experience their psychosocial work environment, with particular attention to the contrast between attachment to the immediate workplace and perceived distance from the employing organization.

Method: Data were collected through ten focus group interviews (N = 33) conducted within the project Medarbetarskap och rekommendationsvilja (“Co-workership and willingness to recommend”) in Sundsvall Municipality, Sweden. Participants represented diverse occupational settings, including social care, culture and leisure, technical services, educational support, and planning administration. Both managers and employees of varying ages and professional backgrounds participated. The interviews, lasting approximately 60–90 minutes, were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). An inductive and iterative process was used to identify shared and contrasting patterns of experience across occupational groups.

Results: Three main themes emerged from the analysis. First, meaningfulness and pride in contributing to the public good were described as powerful motivational resources that promoted well-being and commitment. Second, trust and collegial support functioned as essential conditions for psychological safety and sustained engagement, particularly in care and service environments where relational work was central. Third, participants expressed a pronounced disconnect between the meaningfulness of their daily work and their relationship with the employer. Employees identified strongly with their local workplace but viewed the municipality as distant, bureaucratic, and inattentive to recognition and fairness. This perceived organizational distance coexisted with strong team cohesion and professional pride, forming a psychosocial tension at the heart of public sector work.

Conclusion: The findings reveal a psychosocial paradox of public service: employees’ wellbeing is rooted in proximity to their work and its social purpose but undermined by organizational distance and insufficient recognition. Strengthening relational and recognition structures between employees, line managers, and the wider organization is crucial to bridge this gap. By addressing both the emotional and structural dimensions of the psychosocial work environment, public sector employers can promote sustainable engagement, retention, and mental health among their work force. 

PurposeThis study explores how leaders and employees make sense of working conditions in a recently introduced activity-based workplace (ABW) in a municipal setting in Sweden. The analysis draws on Weick (Citation1995) concept of sensemaking.MethodsTranscripts from focus group interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis to examine how different staff groups experienced the transition from traditional cellular offices to ABW, and how these experiences framed their sense-making of ABW within the organisational context.ResultsThe analysis shows that ABW create working conditions marked by both increased interaction and persistent challenges related to privacy, confidentiality, noise, leadership, and ergonomics. Sensemaking was structured around five themes: Contrasting; Rationality; Collective process; Working from home; and Focusing on the ideal.ConclusionSensemaking of ABW is closely tied to how well concrete working conditions support core work tasks. Acceptance of ABW depends less on the concept itself and more on its ability to accommodate sector-specific demands, particularly confidentiality and focused work. The findings underscore the importance of aligning ABW design and implementation with everyday work practices in the public sector.

Many public organizations are striving to develop sustainable workplaces with a focus on employee engagement. Different models are used in different countries and contexts to measure employee engagement. In Swedish public sector workplaces, a model consisting of three components is used: motivation, leadership and strategic management. There is a need to enhance understanding of the model and its relation to employee advocacy. This study aimsto provide greater understanding of employee engagement dynamics in the public sector, including team climate and work-life balance components,and how this relates to aspects of employee advocacy. Statistical analyses of key components were carried out using survey results from 6020 employees and managers in municipal workplaces.The findings highlight significant relations between the components investigated and the employee-advocacy-related measurement employee Net Promotor Score. Based on OLS regressions, motivation emerged as the most influential component, followed by leadership. It was possible to classify the participants into three categories: Promoters, Passives and Detractors.The promoters exhibited higher scores on all components, and managers had higher scores on several components compared to employees. The results confirm that it is important to use a multi-dimensional approach when studying employee engagement in public sector workplaces.

I denna delrapport redogörs för resultat och tolkningar från publicerade studier och intervjuer med medarbetare mellan februari 2024 och februari 2025 i Sundsvalls kommun.

Den första delen medarbetarengagemang och rekommendationsvilja baseras på analyser av mätningen av Hållbart Medarbetar Engagemang (HME) och rekommendationsvilja (net Promotor Score, eNPS).

I den andra delen, Hur pratar medarbetare om medarbetarengagemang, presenteras resultat med utgångspunkt i intervjuer med grupper av medarbetare från olika verksamheter inom kommunen. Fokus i dessa intervjuer var att försöka fånga och skapa en förståelse om hur medarbetarna upplever faktorerna motivation, styrning, ledarskap samt rekommendationsvilja. Syftet var att försöka beskriva de underliggande resonemangen bakom faktorerna som mäts i HME - undersökningarna.

I den tredje delen Intervjuer med första linjens chefer presenteras analyser av enskilda intervjuer med sex chefer från olika verksamheter.

I del fyra Vad kan arbetsgivaren göra för att du skall stanna kvar? presenteras resultat från intervjuer med olika medarbetargrupper med fokus på medarbetarskap och arbetsgruppens syn på kommunen som arbetsgivare.

Rapporten avslutas med ett sammanfattande slutord där möjligheter och utmaningar beskrivs, avsnittet avslutas med förslag på personalpolitiska åtgärder. För teoretiska resonemang hänvisas till publicerade artiklar.

I den slutrapport som planerar att presenteras i januari 2026 fördjupas resultat, teoretiska resonemang och förslag för framtida åtgärder.

Each year, approximately 1.2 million employees in the Swedish public sector participate in an employee survey designed to assess various dimensions of their work environment. This survey includes questions that examine employee motivation, perceptions of leadership, and understanding of governing documents, with each factor addressed through three specific questions, totaling nine questions in all. This study took a two-pronged approach. In Part I, we focused on validating the quantitative measures of the survey, while Part II, which will be detailed here, employed focus group interviews with various work groups to explore how employees discuss these questions. The results from Part I demonstrated that the measures are reliable. They further revealed that motivation and leadership were the most significant predictors of employees' likelihood to recommend their workplace. Other factors, such as team climate and work-life balance, also played a role in this decision. In Part II, which will be presented at the EAWOP conference, we aimed to uncover how different work groups discuss the topics covered in the survey. We conducted semi-structured focus group interviews with 12 work groups from different areas within the public sector, including schools, kindergartens, social care, elder care, and administration. Each focus group included 3-6 employees and was facilitated by two researchers: one led the discussion, while the other observed and posed additional questions when necessary to delve deeper into certain topics. The findings provide insights into how different work groups articulate motivational factors, their perceptions of leadership, and their engagement with governing documents. Based on these studies, we suggest that combining quantitative employee surveys with qualitative methods enhance our understanding of work life conditions. Additionally, how employees "talk the talk"—or how they frame and discuss these issues—emerges as an essential aspect of understanding workplace dynamics.

This research explores the interplay between sustainable employee engagement (SKR, 2020) and employees’ willingness to recommend (Reichfeld, 2023) in two municipalities. The study forms part of an extensive interdisciplinary research project in collaboration with two municipalities located in the northern part of Sweden. The analysis includes quantitative analyzes of survey responses from questions about sustainable employee engagement and employees' willingness to recommend the municipality as an employer to their acquaintances. In total, the dataset encompasses responses from approximately 11,000 employees and managers in the two municipalities (municipality A 6020, - municipality B, 4991 employees). 

Sustainable employee engagement is construed along three dimensions:  motivation, leadership, and management, - each underpinned by three variables. These dimensions are examined individually and combined in a so-called HME index. Additionally, the study evaluates employees’ perceptions of the social work environment through four inquires, alongside their assessments of workload balance via three inquires. The propensity to recommend is quantified using the so-called net Promoter Score, measured through a singular query regarding employees’ willingness to recommend their employer to acquaintance on a scale of 0-10.

Preliminary findings reveal strong intercorrelations among the motivation, leadership, and management facets, with the tree-factor model elucidating over 75 percent of the variance. Regression analyses further underscore the significant association between employees’ inclination to recommend their employer and their perceptions of sustainable employee engagement, work environment satisfaction and acceptable workload.  Categorizing employees according to the theoretical model of the net Promotor Score scale elucidates nuanced distinctions. Ambassadors, exhibiting the highest propensity to recommend, demonstrate markedly elevated scores across motivation, leadership and management dimensions compared to passively satisfied individuals, who in turn, surpass critics- the cohort displaying the lowest endorsement willingness. Preliminary findings also hint at disparities based on organizational hierarchy (managerial vs non-managerial roles) and gender. Managers tend to exhibit higher ratings across all dimensions except workload satisfaction. Gender-based differentials manifest wherein men are more inclined to recommend their employers and perceive superior leadership compared to women. Moreover, men tend to perceive the social work environment better and workload as more reasonable, whereas women demonstrate higher perceptions of management.  Through Additional studies within the project, encompassing individual interviews and focus group discussions built upon the quantitative findings. We aim to delve deeper into the dynamics of employee engagement and willingness to recommend across different occupational categories within the municipal sector.  We aim to submit an expanded to a full-abstract for potential before May 15th.   

This study explores the interconnected dynamics of employeeship, motivation, leadership, management, and ambassadorship within the contemporary public workplace. Employeeship, a concept embodying commitment, accountability, and proactive participation, forms the foundation of a thriving organizational culture. Motivation, a driving force behind individual and collective performance, emerges as a critical factor influencing employeeship. Effective leadership, characterized by inspiration, guidance, and a strategic vision, serves as a catalyst for fostering a culture of employeeship and motivation.

Ambassadorship extends beyond organizational boundaries, emphasizing employees as brand advocates, influencing external perceptions. Robust assessment mechanisms play a key role in gauging employees' contributions, identifying areas for improvement, and aligning organizational goals with individual aspirations.

This study underscores the symbiotic relationship among these elements, positing that a harmonious blend can cultivate a resilient and high-performing workforce. As organizations navigate the evolving landscape of work dynamics, understanding and optimizing these facets contribute to a holistic approach that fosters employee engagement, work satisfaction, and sustained organizational success.

The study includes data from around 10000 employees and leaders in two Swedish municipalities. Preliminary results indicate that there is a strong correlation between the studied factors: motivation, leadership, management, and ambassadorship. However, the data also reveal differences according to factors such as gender and position (leader – employee). This study also raises theoretical questions and suggests improvements of the assessment methods often used to measure employee satisfaction in the Swedish public sector.