What is discrimination?
The Discrimination Act states that employers are obliged to work actively to counteract and prevent discrimination. This is referred to in the Act as active measures. The obligation to work with active measures only applies to working life and education, unlike the other parts of the Discrimination Act, which apply to the whole of society. Examples of working with active measures include creating and informing staff about guidelines on preventing and counteracting harassment and sexual harassment or conducting a salary audit process. By law, working with active measures must be a natural component of work environment management.
What does work with active measures actually mean?
Work with active measures is to be conducted in four stages. The employer is to investigate, analyse, remedy and follow up its work.
The areas in which the employer is to carry out this work are:
- Working conditions
- Salaries and other employment conditions
- Parenting and work
- Training and other skills development
Work to counteract and prevent discrimination applies to all seven forms of discrimination covered by the Discrimination Act, namely:
- Gender
- Gender identity or gender expression
- Ethnicity
- Religion or other beliefs
- Disability
- Sexual orientation
- Age
If you would like to know more about how to work with active measures, there is a lot of information available on the website of the Equality Ombudsman (DO). (Opens in a separate window.)
Requirement to collaborate and to document the work
By law, the employer is obliged to carry out active measures work in collaboration with the employees, which usually means the trade unions. At higher education institutions, this is the local Saco-S/AkademikerAlliansen association. The preparatory works to the Act state that collaboration should take place at all stages of the work, i.e. investigation, analysis, implementation of measures and follow-up.
Employers with 25 or more employees must document their work with active measures. If you are interested in how the work is carried out at the higher education institution where you are employed, you can always ask the employer or talk to the local elected representatives of your local Saco-S/ AkademikerAlliansen association about seeing the documentation or getting information about the work. You can request this documentation as a publicly available document, provided that the employer is in the state sector.
A natural part of work environment management
The Work Environment Act states clearly that the employer is obliged to ensure that working conditions are adapted to people's different physical and mental needs. In addition, the Swedish Work Environment Authority's regulations on the planning and organisation of work environment management (AFS 2023:2) states that the employer must plan and organise work so that victimisation is prevented and that there are to be procedures in place to detect and identify indications at an early stage.
The rules on work to promote a good working environment and on work to prevent and combat discrimination are very similar in their structure and go hand in hand. There are therefore major efficiency benefits for the employer to work with these issues at the same time. This is emphasised as a preferred working method in the preparatory work for the Discrimination Act's rules on active measures.
The rules are mandatory
All rules concerning work to prevent and combat discrimination are mandatory. This means that there is a supervisory authority - in this case the Equality Ombudsman (DO) - which monitors compliance with the provisions on active measures.
An employer who does not comply with the rules on active measures can be forced to pay a fine and be obliged to start work on active measures. However, the employer cannot be liable to pay compensatory damages for breaches of the rules on active measures.