- Sofia Brandt worked for Accenture before becoming a founder and lives in Gothenburg, Sweden.
- Brandt shares aspects of Swedish work culture that might surprise people.
- Swedes enjoy 480 days of parental leave which can be divided between couples and find the boasting rude.
This essay as told is based on a transcribed conversation with Sofia Brandt, co-founder of the therapy app. Ally, who lives in Gothenburg, Sweden. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I worked at Accenture for seven years, primarily with US and Swedish companies, before founding my own startup, a therapeutics app called Ally.
At Accenture, I noticed many differences between Swedish and American working styles. There are also aspects of working life in Sweden that I have observed as a founder that make life easier for parents and create better working conditions.
These are the main aspects of working in Sweden that might surprise other cultures.
Support for working parents
In Sweden, parental leave has become an incubator for new ideas and people often change their career direction while on leave. You benefit from 16 months of leave from work to care for a new child, often at full salary, if your company supplements the government benefit. You benefit from 480 days of parental allowance shared between parents and per child from the public insurance fund.
During the first 390 days, you receive approximately 80% of your salary. You receive a lower amount for the remaining 90 days, around 15 euros per day. This support gives people time to think about their careers and brainstorm ideas while caring for their newborn.
During my 12 months of maternity leave at Accenture, I had the idea for our startup. In addition to caring for my newborn, I took long stroller walks and other dedicated time thinking about my budding business idea and iterating with my fellow co-founders. Being on leave gives you time to think with some distance from everyday life.
I received financial support during my parental leave and while my children were growing up. As a startup founder, you are initially paid very little. We managed to get by thanks to the Swedish financial provisions in favor of parents.
The subsidized child care system means we pay less than $125 a month to raise our two children in full-time day care, compared to our friends in San Francisco, who pay about $2,900 a month per child.
Sweden also has “vård av barn,” or VAB, a policy that allows you to take paid days off to stay home and care for your sick child. There’s also an open culture around it, with people saying they’re doing VAB in their out-of-office replies and Slack statuses.
Fathers also have to take three months of parental leave, which is great because it pushes them to be a bigger part of their children’s lives and gives working mothers more flexibility. Of the 480 days, at least 90 must be taken by the parent who has not reached the age of majority. Most couples try to split it 50/50, but you can split it however you want. This means one parent can take 390 days and the other 90 days, or you can split it in half or anywhere in between.
In 2022, I was about to have my second child. I had been running Ally for several years, but it wasn’t the right time to take maternity leave. My husband did the first six months and I took time off after that. He received comments, mostly from older people, who found it odd. But for us it worked perfectly.
Humble approach to work
At Accenture, I noticed differences between Swedish and American working styles. In Sweden, work-life balance is important and what you do in your free time plays a bigger role in your identity, whereas it’s the opposite in the United States.
Sweden has a built-in cultural code called jantelagen, where everyone is considered equal. Humility is essential and talking about money is generally forbidden.
In the United States, individual success is celebrated. You talk loudly about your victories and celebrate making money.
Bragging in Sweden and exaggerating your achievements or being too flashy is risky, as you may appear obnoxious or rude – but this would not formally jeopardize your job.
When recruiting employees in Sweden, you have to ask yourself if the candidate is holding back, and in most cases this is the case.
You have to push candidates to say what they have done, and with international recruiters, the Swedes could lose out because they will not talk about their full potential.
My co-founders and I struggle with jantelagen. Our all-female founding team must perform in this challenging economic climate. There is a fine line between humility and ambition, and speaking to international investors with our Swedish nature is a real challenge.
Flat businesses
We built Ally to be non-hierarchical, but it’s not just a startup thing. In Sweden, companies have almost no hierarchy and everyone has the right to express themselves.
You work as a team and everyone is responsible. But you need to involve everyone to make a change or decision. It means trusting people to get things done independently. It also creates a strong individual responsibility towards a company’s mission.
Collective bargaining, another principle of Swedish work culture, puts the needs of employees first and gives them more power.
Many people are unionized, and employers often encourage them. With the union comes greater power and expertise for workers in negotiating wages, benefits and hours, rather than having to go it alone and negotiate independently.
Seen from both sides, many of these inherently Swedish characteristics help build sustainable businesses over time and protect the interests of both employer and employee so that everyone can work together in a positive way.
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