Volvo Cars moves from Sweden unless the car manufacturer can recruit the right skills. That warning comes from CEO Håkan Samuelsson. Although he is clear that it is a decision that is far away.
Mikael Törnwall
Updated 2019-07-04
published 2019-07-04
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Volvo's CEO on the shortcoming: "How do we do?"
It is a beautiful morning in Visby when SvD Näringsliv meets Volvo Cars CEO Håkan Samuelsson.
The competence supply is one of Volvo Cars' most important issues. Before the transition from cars that run on gasoline and diesel to electricity, the company will need hundreds of new engineers, but also top managers and design managers with cutting-edge expertise.
And getting the right people is getting difficult.
- We talk a lot about that we should switch to electrification and self-driving cars. But we do not talk as much about the fact that it will also require new skills, he says and continues:
- How seventeen should we be able to do it with the same people? It's actually impossible!
One of the challenges according to Håkan Samuelsson is the recruitment of foreign top managers.
He questions whether Sweden really is a sufficiently attractive country to move to.
- In a global company like Volvo Cars, we need a management team with both Swedish and foreign managers. But the taxes in Sweden make it difficult. We would need the expert tax to be extended so that they can stay for a long time in Sweden for more than three years.
It is definitely no help when people read about shooting in Gothenburg.
Another area where Sweden must be better is the supply of good international schools, according to the Volvo manager.
- We must get better at receiving people. We are good at sending out Swedes in the world, but not as well at receiving foreigners to Sweden.
Samuelsson also points out that Sweden is more often mentioned as a precarious country to live in.
- It is definitely no help when people read about shootings in Gothenburg and wonder if they really dare to move to Sweden.
The second challenge that Håkan Samuelsson talks about is that the company within research and development is facing a change of skills. An organization that has been the world leader in developing gasoline and diesel cars now will develop self-driving electric cars.
It is a shift that, according to him, cannot be solved with internal training, despite the fact that in 20,000 employees in the coming years will receive training on electrification.
- We can't just bring in new ones at the top, it gets too expensive. It requires people to leave the company and start working elsewhere.
We must be able to tell employees that we do not have a job for you.
Like many other business executives, Samuelsson calls for a more flexible labor market.
- We must be able to tell employees that we do not have a job for you. We should perhaps look at the Danish model for the labor market (which makes it easier for employers to cancel employees, but also makes it easier to find new jobs, reds note).
When it comes to competence among engineers, how do you think Sweden stands there in areas such as electrification and self-learning cars?
- It is incredibly simplistic to say that our Swedish engineers are not satisfied. But we also need to bring in skills from abroad. When it comes to digitization, we must have competence from the US. When it comes to electrification, we must have competence from Germany and China.
It is clear that the conversion will affect many individuals, when knowledge about diesel engines will be out and knowledge about electricity will be introduced.
In fact, we will only have a head office and development in the country where it works.
What is your advice to an engineer who risks not fit into the new, how should he or she act to be relevant in the future?
- It becomes very difficult when you angle it that way. That's not the problem. My problem is not what to say to that person, my problem is that we need mechanisms in the labor market to cope with this transition.
You say it's increasingly difficult to recruit. Should we be concerned that Volvo Cars does not have research or headquarters in Sweden in the future?
- It is often believed that decisions taken by senior executives or taken in China. But the fact is that we will only have a head office and development in the country where it works.
- We are not in the vicinity of a simplified discussion right now that we are going to move the head office. But yes, it is something that can happen in the future.