Denmark is losing skilled workers to employment overseas where tax conditions are more favourable, and where employment prospects and the opportunity for career advancement appear to be greater. The Danish State is also making it difficult for companies to grow and to bring in foreign money.
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Many Danish businesses face growing problems finding and retaining staff with core skill sets and they find themselves paying escalating salaries to Danes or needing to lure workers to Denmark from abroad. The agility of Danish businesses is being adversely affected.Copenhagen-based marketing agency Brand X has faced this issue in recruiting new staff to meet its own growth targets. Founded by two Brits – Adam Hill (Creative Director) and Jason Lambert (Commercial Director) in 2005, Brand X has found difficulty in bringing skilled Danish workers in to serve its clients here and abroad. Having interviewed many Danes for new positions, Brand X has so far found its new team members from the UK, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia and Holland.
‘Adam and I met in Denmark years ago, having moved here for non-work reasons. We both quickly found Denmark to be a great place to live, which nurtured family life and gave us a reasonable quality of life with a strong social service infrastructure’, says Jason Lambert. ‘As our company grows, we find it increasingly difficult to find staff to serve our clients’ needs, and we’ve had to search long and hard for the calibre of staff we need. We want to have Danes in our team, but we’ve been unable to find any recently that meet our requirements. It seems they have all left the country’.
Brand X’s clients include a number of companies in countries such as the UK, USA, Norway, Greece and Dubai, Danish technology companies and recently it has welcomed major Danish insurance company IHI onto its books. Brand X's Danish clients need expertise in taking Danish products and messaging into international marketplaces, and it is this combination of skills that has proven a challenge to find in the labour market here.
Adam Hill says ‘As we plan for further growth, we have to seriously consider Denmark continuing to be our company’s base. Having come from the UK, Jason and I both know there is a diverse, ambitious and hard working labour pool in the UK, and we are quite prepared to move our company and current staff there if we need to. If Denmark offered Brand X everything it needed, we would be less inclined to consider moving.’
Opening the Doors
Brand X is not alone. There is active discussion in the Danish media and amongst politicians concerning Denmark’s need for more skilled workers to fulfil corporate demand and grow the economy. As a result many companies, encouraged by the government, are looking abroad to tempt skilled foreign workers to come and work in Denmark. With just 2% unemployment, Denmark needs more hands to do skilled work. It’s a simple case of supply and demand.
The Minister for Employment and Minister for Science, Claus Hjort Frederiksen and Helge Sander, are both strong supporters of this notion and have openly backed it. Together they are spearheading a campaign backed by the Danish government to encourage businesses to be more open towards foreigners, making it easier to "translate" foreign qualifications. In addition, Danish language courses are being made available to all immigrants.
Red tape is being lifted to make it easier for skilled immigrants to work in Denmark, especially those from outside the EU. Many Danes believe immigrants who make the effort to come and work in Denmark should be welcomed as long as they make an effort to ‘integrate’ into Danish society.
Within the past month, Brand X was singled out by a study conducted by a large consulting firm on behalf of a group of government agencies. Brand X was one of 600 companies interviewed on the phone, asked about how easy it found hiring foreigners. The aim of the study, Brand X was told, was to make it easier.
In the past fortnight, one of Brand X’s staff, a Filipino graphic designer, had to renew his work permit. Along with that, the company was told it would have to provide a new employment agreement and would also have to advertise the already filled position so that new, local (assumed EU) citizens could apply. Is this waste of the company’s time and the applicants’ time really justified, when the company has the colleague it needs and has no wish to replace him?
Brand X’s position is that Denmark needs to do more to fight the brain drain and to bring in more skilled staff to allow Danish companies to compete on the global stage. Brand X brings in considerable revenues from overseas businesses – that’s money coming into Denmark that was not already here – and does not find that the State gives it clear air to breathe in order to do this valuable work.