An article in Politiken yesterday reported on the results of a recent study among international ‘knowledge workers’ in Denmark, showing that 9 out of 10 respondents emphasized the fact that Danish employers respect their employees’ family lives. The article suggested that Denmark should ‘sell itself’ to foreign professionals using the associated soft values of flexible working hours, welfare and security. Throw in liquorice and Danish design and you really have a perfect society! But jokes aside, I must say I agree. I’m just not sure whether those are strong enough on their own to attract foreign talent.
One of my most enduring memories of business school in New York – and one that shows how far the Danish mentality is from the American mentality – is a story told by my finance professor in class one day. He began explaining to us students how his family managed to avoid paying almost any income and capital gains taxes over the years by constantly borrowing against their assets, and enjoying the associated tax breaks. He was part bragging part ‘teaching’ us how to mange our finances wisely. His comments were at once funny and tasteless, but most importantly gave me a great insight into the American psyche as a foreigner trying to make sense of the land of opportunity – taxes are bad, maximizing profit is key, and in general the individual reigns supreme.
This approach is partly what makes America so driven, productive and successful, but it arguably leads to a work ethic that does not sufficiently consider family and community life. Denmark can be perceived as the other end of the spectrum, where the term ‘community’ far overshadows the concept of ‘the individual’ in many ways, and where individual profit is less important than collective wealth. This makes it a place where values such as family life, work-life balance and support for others are paramount.
Another experience that sharpened this point for me was when I compared the reactions I received from many in London to having my first child (“oh, you’ll now find that you want to work harder and longer to support your family and to have some time off from a crying baby and dirty nappies…”) to those my friends in Denmark received following a similar development (“you should probably switch to ‘flextime’ so that you can spend more time with your family”). That just says it all, doesn’t it?
I personally find this focus on private life attractive and I’m sure there are lots of other foreign professionals who do. But it’s far from certain to me that respect for an employee’s family life, however lovely it is for us parents, is enough to attract foreign professionals in the global competition for talent. Of course there’s the obvious issue of pay and taxes, which is partly addressed by the well-meaning but flawed special tax scheme for foreigners. Then there’s the expectation by international professionals that working in Denmark will contribute to their global career, in case they choose to move on after a while rather than settle down here. That perception doesn’t exist at the moment.
More than anything though, I think Denmark lacks a fundamentally open and international job market, where foreign professionals feel that opportunities are available to them irrespective of their local ‘network’ or their command of Danish and the Danish way (something that international knowledge workers expect and that I don’t feel exists here to a sufficient extent, as I wrote before). Naturally there will always be positions that only native Danish speakers can and should fulfil, but the rest need to be made accessible also to those who haven’t lived their whole lives here. The horrific (and what I consider unconstitutional) Danish holiday pay system – which currently creates a bizarre situation where newcomers get no paid time off in their first 12-16 months of work in Denmark because they don’t have any holiday pay ‘accrued’ from last year – is a small example of how much the job market infrastructure here ignores people who haven’t lived and worked in Denmark their whole lives.
As I said before, attracting and retaining foreign talent is not just a matter of politics and policies, but also of mentality and habits. It’s business owners, managers and ordinary people who need to genuinely want to have an international work environment and society before the Danish job market can become truly open, dynamic and welcoming to outsiders. Selling Denmark’s soft values is the relevant and sensible way to go, but it will be much more successful if the legal and mental ‘infrastructures’ take a few leaps forward to that end.
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