Fulfilling the lack of employee: The Strategy from Swedish Public Sector practices

The purpose of the study is to describe how Swedish municipalities recruit the current labour market in response to immigration movement. Data from Swedish Immigration Agency (Migrationsverket, 2017) from 2013 to October 2017 show the highest number of asylum applicant was in 2015 with 162.877 applicants. However, in October 2017, Swedish Public Employment Service (Arbetsförmedlingen) revealed the new data from August 2017 which said that Swedish unemployment rate decreases from 7.6% to 7.4% compared to the same month last year. The rise of labour force occurs in many countries. Thus, the Swedish strategies in handling the problem may contribute as a references in the recruitment process and employee distribution strategy. The study used qualitative method based on in-depth interview were conducted with thirteen (13) Human Resource (HR) managers and specialist from ten (10) municipalities in Sweden as the data collection method. The perspective of translation concept is used as the analytical basis. The research found that the labour market in Sweden experience lack of employee, and high disparity in the unemployment rate between native-born and foreign-background. In order to cope with this situation, municipalities implement different strategies and programs such as “move a friend” program, re-employed retired staff, collaboration with other organisation (Arbetsförmedlingen and Mittliv) for staff level and talent pool management in the managerial level. The research also revealed that in order to open more opportunity for the foreignbackground applicants, municipalities apply competence-based recruitment system that focuses on the candidate’s personal competencies rather than education qualification or background. Keyword— immigration, diversity, lack of employees, public