To support companies in strengthening decent work and sustainable business, Swedish Workplace Programme (SWP) provides three ways of collaboration:
Swedish Workplace Programme (SWP) is a multi-step approach to facilitate dialogues between managers and employees with the aim to find solutions to company specific challenges.The approach is versatile and replicable, and can be used to develop sustainability of the workplace, supply chain, improve customer relations and create engagement within communities.
SWP establishes, trains and develops workplace committees based on mutual respect, commitment and international labour standards. By having a structure where joint goals are formulated, management and elected employees/trade union representatives can change attitudes in the workplace, thereby improving both the working environment and business operations.
We believe that when a company places employees’ engagement at the centre of its business, it encourages and creates an inclusive work environment. This in turn enhances the company’s profile and position to attract and retain employees and increase its competitiveness.
Swedish Workplace Programme (SWP) utilizes platforms and networks as a catalyst for companies to engage in joint strategic discussions concerning improvements, solutions and actions taken to address local sustainability and related workplace challenges.
Companies use the dialogues as a collective tool to promote their decent work and sustainability agenda within their business environment.
Your company does not have to be involved in a Workplace Programme to participate in the sharing and dialogue session called Sustainable Business Platform. The Sustainable Business Platforms are established according to region for companies that want to address sustainability challenges and generate results in the field of Agenda 2030 and specifically the global goal 8 (decent work and economic growth).
This component includes the development and diffusion of best practices and learnings from the Swedish Workplace Programme’s (SWP) iterations. To support our iterative approach, the Global learning- component provides the programme with learnings from the regional Sustainable Business Platforms (SBP) as well as from the Workplace Programmes.
The key for SWP is to create an enabling environment for learning within the programme through the peer to peer exchanges between and within companies, including the supply chain.
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A lack of enabling environment for social dialogue at the workplace level, despite the provision of legislative acts that protect and promote workplace cooperation is a reoccuring issue in Kenya. To implement good policy there must be a fertil ground.
Therefore SWP developed the UP! project. Together with Swedish companies as an entry point, and with unions i South africa and Kenya.
In Kenya SWP created the SWP UP! Programme targeting skills development of the union Shop Stewards from 18 companies in the Automotive sector in Kenya during 2021. As a result, the Stewards were able to use their skills to build trust and cooperation with management in new ways to avoid conflicts.
A second cohort of training, in close cooperation with union AUKMW, takes place in 2022.
The training allows shop stewards to step out of their daily routines and understand their role and the purpose of their union, understand the labour market context, the laws that regulate relationships and the business itself. But on a human level, many shop stewards also highlighted that they feel respected as human beings, and that they have developed the skills to engage with supervisors and management and experience respect in professional relations. The experiences had deeply impressed them and helped to project the vision of dialogue and mutual respect and their own potential as a means to change workplaces.
The intervention of the SWP programme had a direct effect at the workplaces, where shop stewards listed several cases where they had managed to intervene and secure results in dialogue with management, avert crises or find solutions based on opportunities and the communication skills obtained during the SWP training. For the Amalgamated Metal Workers Unions in Kenya, the shop stewards pointed to how the training had enabled them to design their own strategies at the workplace in relation to supervisors and staff, and to achieve many concrete results.
Based on this shop steward upskilling, I feel confident that as a union we now have change ambassadors that will grow the industry, protect, and promote decent work principles for both the employer and the employees represented. And that disputes will be dealt with at the workplace level by though consultative dialogue.
General Secretary
Amalgamated Union of Kenya Metal Workers