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Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

bbc.com

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Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#11

Post by adetrest »

Kiro wrote: post #10
adetrest wrote: post #6

Meanwhile, in the US and Canada, you are forced to sign clauses that gives your employer full ownership of anything you invent ever while employed and you have to ask your ~parents~ employer if you could please do something else on the side. Good for Sweden, these feodal rules are dragging everyone down.

> and you have to ask your ~~parents~~ employer if you could please do something else on the side What does this mean?

It's meant to be struck out but HN doesn't do strikeout text. I meant that just as when you were in school and needed a hall pass or note from your parents to be absent, once you're an adult you need a formal authorization from your employer to work on anything else than your job during your employment even if it's on your own time.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#12

Post by thatguyagain »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #5
52-6F-62 wrote: post #2

I think this is brilliant, but I’m interested to hear criticisms or arguments against it.

Well, the biggest argument against it will be a need to find and train a temporary replacement for the person. For many positions finding and training alone may take longer than that. And then what do you do with the replacement once the original guy is back? Overall though, I would agree that benefits overweight potential problems.

Some people can choose to work 50% instead of a 100% leave, so there are ways to solve it.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#13

Post by mrmekon »

Since maternity and paternity leave are frequently more than 6 months long, employees temporarily leaving for a big chunk of the year is just a fact of doing business here.

Granting unpaid leave to go try your own thing for a while is, from the employer's perspective, not any different. Some people never come back, most people do. The same is true for parental leave (many quit their jobs towards the end of their leave, if they had already been thinking about it).

Even when they aren't required to grant it, larger Swedish companies will often give you unpaid leave if you just ask. The fear is that otherwise you will quit. Hiring is hard here, so it's better to have a promise of someone coming back in 6 months than a job opening that can take 12 months to fill.

Sweden has an enormous market of consultancies compared to the U.S. for filling these temporary gaps. Obviously consultants are expensive and not trained on your projects, so it's not the same as a long-time employee, but it gives options to "control the bleeding."

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#14

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

adetrest wrote: post #11
Kiro wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and you have to ask your ~~parents~~ employer if you could please do something else on the side What does this mean?

It's meant to be struck out but HN doesn't do strikeout text. I meant that just as when you were in school and needed a hall pass or note from your parents to be absent, once you're an adult you need a formal authorization from your employer to work on anything else than your job during your employment even if it's on your own time.

Surely this is down to the individual employer? Some companies try to add clauses like this to contracts here in the UK but thankfully they're generally not enforceable.

Speaking as an employer, what my employees get up to in their own time is their business as long as they get their work done when they're supposed to.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#15

Post by maxsilver »

mrmekon wrote: post #13

Since maternity and paternity leave are frequently more than 6 months long, employees temporarily leaving for a big chunk of the year is just a fact of doing business here. Granting unpaid leave to go try your own thing for a while is, from the employer's perspective, not any different. Some people never come back, most people do. The same is true for parental leave (many quit their jobs towards the end of their leav…

> The fear is that otherwise you will quit. Hiring is hard here, so it's better to have a promise of someone coming back in 6 months than a job opening that can take 12 months to fill.

This is what a strong economy actually looks like.

It's hard (in my experience) to get Americans to understand this, because our economy here has been so bad for so long, most people here have never experienced anything like this.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#16

Post by maxsilver »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #14
adetrest wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's meant to be struck out but HN doesn't do strikeout text. I meant that just as when you were in school and needed a hall pass or note from your parents to be absent, once you're an adult you need a formal authorization from your employer to work on anything else than your job during your employment even if it's on your own time.

Surely this is down to the individual employer? Some companies try to add clauses like this to contracts here in the UK but thankfully they're generally not enforceable. Speaking as an employer, what my employees get up to in their own time is their business as long as they get their work done when they're supposed to.

> Surely this is down to the individual employer?

In theory, yes, In practice, nearly every single US employer has this somewhere in their contract automatically by default -- the only way a company doesn't, is if someone explicitly got it removed.

Also, in much of the US, the clause is enforceable, so companies have basically no incentive to remove it.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#17

Post by CalRobert »

maxsilver wrote: post #15
mrmekon wrote: post #13

Since maternity and paternity leave are frequently more than 6 months long, employees temporarily leaving for a big chunk of the year is just a fact of doing business here. Granting unpaid leave to go try your own thing for a while is, from the employer's perspective, not any different. Some people never come back, most people do. The same is true for parental leave (many quit their jobs towards the end of their leav…

> The fear is that otherwise you will quit. Hiring is hard here, so it's better to have a promise of someone coming back in 6 months than a job opening that can take 12 months to fill. This is what a strong economy actually looks like. It's hard (in my experience) to get Americans to understand this, because our economy here has been so bad for so long, most people here have never experienced anything like this.

It's like you need to grab Plato for a search and rescue mission to the cave.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#18

Post by adetrest »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #14
adetrest wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's meant to be struck out but HN doesn't do strikeout text. I meant that just as when you were in school and needed a hall pass or note from your parents to be absent, once you're an adult you need a formal authorization from your employer to work on anything else than your job during your employment even if it's on your own time.

Surely this is down to the individual employer? Some companies try to add clauses like this to contracts here in the UK but thankfully they're generally not enforceable. Speaking as an employer, what my employees get up to in their own time is their business as long as they get their work done when they're supposed to.

Count your blessings, every US and Canadian work contract (hell, even some contracting/consulting agreements) I have ever seen or signed had a no-compete and a clause prohibiting you from doing anything else than working for your employer.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#19

Post by lkrubner »

maxsilver wrote: post #15
mrmekon wrote: post #13

Since maternity and paternity leave are frequently more than 6 months long, employees temporarily leaving for a big chunk of the year is just a fact of doing business here. Granting unpaid leave to go try your own thing for a while is, from the employer's perspective, not any different. Some people never come back, most people do. The same is true for parental leave (many quit their jobs towards the end of their leav…

> The fear is that otherwise you will quit. Hiring is hard here, so it's better to have a promise of someone coming back in 6 months than a job opening that can take 12 months to fill. This is what a strong economy actually looks like. It's hard (in my experience) to get Americans to understand this, because our economy here has been so bad for so long, most people here have never experienced anything like this.

Exactly. Male real wages have been stagnant since 1973, and that's without considering the situation around health care, where costs have risen much faster than general inflation. Counting health care, male real wages have declined noticeably since 1973. Meanwhile, returns to capital have grown dramatically. This is precisely what you would expect in a weak economy, where the workers necessarily lack bargaining power. In a strong economy, the percentage of national income going to workers would increase, as it did from 1935 to 1973.

Re: Sweden's leave of absence system helps workers launch their own business

#20

Post by JoelTheSuperior »

INTPenis wrote: post #8

I'm an anonymous coward on here so I can give another perspective. My employer struggles to find skilled people and when one guy on my team suddenly disappeared for 6 months it was definitely felt. Before that I hadn't really grasped the idea yet. Even though I've lived in Sweden since I was a child. I just couldn't accept that you can duck out of your job for several months and then come back as if nothing happened.…

To be fair, is this not at least partially the fault of the employer for not ensuring that they had adequate cover?
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