The case in summary: • Swedish Max Åqvist worked as a summer substitute in the healthcare system in Sortland last year and shared photos from the experience with fellow students in Skåne, Sweden. • His enthusiasm and pictures inspired 15 fellow students to apply for a summer temporary job in Sortland this year. • Sortland municipality has previously struggled to get enough summer workers and has, among other things, used social media to attract applicants. Other municipalities are also struggling to get the holiday solitaire to go up. • Around 60 Swedish students have also taken summer jobs in Narvik municipality, which may be due to better working conditions in Norway compared to Sweden. • Nature and the opportunity to combine work with outdoor life are also important for the Swedish students. (The summary is made by an AI service from OpenAI. The content is quality assured by news’s journalists before publication.) – It’s very “cool” that so many people want to come up here, says Swede Max Åqvist on the phone from Sortland. There he is a summer substitute in the health care system for the second year in a row. He and his girlfriend returned to their studies in Skåne in Sweden full of enthusiasm after last year’s summer job in northern Norway. And when students meet again, they often talk about what they have experienced. – I told them that I had been very happy with the summer job and that the place was so heavenly beautiful. Then I showed pictures from there. Max Åqvist, summer substitute and medical student Photo: Private photo Åqvist says that many of the fellow students had already heard of Lofoten and Vesterålen. – They would like to go here because it is so beautiful, and the municipality also needed us this summer. Forced to rethink In recent years, it has been difficult to get enough summer workers in the health care system in Norwegian municipalities. The big question has been: How to get the summer duty schedule to go together when the permanent employees are going on holiday? Expensive temp agencies are the solution in some places. Others, such as Sortland, would prefer to be able to get the substitutes they need on their own. But Vesterål municipality has experienced that the number of applicants for summer jobs has dropped considerably in recent years. They have been forced to rethink. Two years ago, they hired a local company to make videos that went viral on social media. – It was a success. We reached out and got a lot of attention. Now we’ve run that campaign for three years and only tweaked it a bit. We see that the effect has decreased a little, says Sture Jacobsen, manager of health and care in Sortland. This year, a word of mouth from a Swedish medical student saved the day. A kind of snowball effect Max Åqvist himself does not want to take all the credit. He has “just talked and shown some pictures”. – Those who have come up here have also brought their own friends with them. So there will be a snowball effect. – Will you come back next year, do you think? – I have that door completely open. I would love to come back. I think it’s a fantastic way to spend the summer. So yes, please. Sture Jacobsen in the municipality cannot boast enough about what Max has done. Here is the first group of Swedish medical students working in Sortland this month (from left: Max Åqvist, Hector Boquist, Hanna Kayser, Selma Helldin. The other 10 will be in place these days. Photo: Private photo Gets a prize – He should have says Jacobsen. It was the local newspaper that wrote about the matter. And Jacobsen is no less than that he has promised. – He chuckles. No one has done a better job well cited that this is the greatest single achievement of all time in terms of recruitment. So it’s absolutely fantastic. Still, Jacobsen is careful about giving advice to other municipalities. Before the summer, it’s almost a race to get hold of substitutes, and preferably well-qualified ones. – This is really the issue we discuss the most during the year and that we work on the most. How can we get the summer to go around, and get the holidays done while we have good health services It’s a very big deal. Sortland municipality is the largest municipality in Vesterålen and has around 10,000 inhabitants. Photo: Synnøve Sundby Fallmyr / news He says the municipality will probably have to do something else next year, be even more creative. In addition, they must ensure that they are a good employer. – It is this effect that we discovered with Max. That we simply use those we have to recruit more from their environments. There is nothing more hocus pocus than that we just have to be dead serious about this. We have to take good care of the ones we have, and get them to come back, says Stig Jacobsen. But it is not only Sortland that benefits from Swedish students this summer. This was one of the pictures Max showed the other students and which lured several of them to Vesterålen. Photo: Private photo Better in Norway About 60 Swedes traveled to Narvik municipality, also in Nordland, to work in health this summer. Both nursing and medical students, writes Forward. The home service has a bad reputation in Sweden, one of the Swedish students, Lisa Satrell, tells the newspaper. – Our opinion is that it is better to work in home care in Norway than in Sweden. At home it is very stressful, and there you cannot spend so much time at home with those who need help. Here we can spend more time sitting down and talking to the elderly, she says. Narvik is the third largest municipality in Nordland in terms of population, with almost 19,000 inhabitants. Photo: Trygve Grønning And there is no doubt that the magnificent nature both in the Narvik area and in Vesterålen tempts the Swedish students. – Being able to combine work with walking in nature is absolutely fantastic. We got to have the same schedules so we could travel around the area together. Published 24/07/2024, at 05.39
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Max showed photos from the summer job in Sortland. Now Swedish temporary workers are saving northern Norwegian municipalities – news Nordland
