And yet, the World Happiness Report is taken seriously, and we’re not disagreeing. It uses a variety of data to produce a country by country ranking of happiness. The report says “Our measurement of subjective well-being continues to rely on three main well-being indicators: life evaluations, positive emotions, and negative emotions.”¹

The report uses survey data to generate its rankings, with people giving their opinions on a variety of factors including social support, life expectancy, GDP per capita, freedom to make life choices, generosity and corruption.¹

As you’ve probably guessed from the title of this Viewpoint… one region consistently stands out in the happiness rankings. The Nordics. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland (as well as the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland),² make up the region and feature prominently in the list every time.

Of the top eight countries in the World Happiness Report, five are Nordic – the other three in the region don’t appear because they’re not included in the survey.¹

It’s likely that generous parental leave packages could also play a factor in happiness and gender equality.

• In Sweden, parents are entitled to share 480 days paid parental leave per child. Each parent can transfer part of their leave to the other parent if they wish.
• In Denmark, parents receive 52 weeks of paid parental leave and can split 32 weeks of that leave however they wish.
• In Norway, parents can choose 49 weeks (at 100% coverage) or 59 weeks (at 80% coverage). Both parents each receive 15 weeks non-transferable parental leave and then between them another 16 or 18 weeks of unallocated leave to share as they see fit.⁶

To find out more about employee benefits in the region, we spoke to our network partner in Norway, Gjensidige.

Eirik Jensen, their Senior Underwriter, gave us his insights...

“Expectations toward employee benefits are shaped by industry standards. The scope is determined by company size and industry. Generally higher paid employees are undercompensated by Norwegian Social Security, so employees with higher salaries expect better employee benefits than employees with lower salaries. For example, workers in industries like construction and retail often get the minimum coverage required by law; workers compensation. Workers in the oil and gas industries and finance often get workers compensation with added full-time coverage for accident and illness, group life insurance, travel insurance and private medical insurance. Plus, workers in larger companies tend to have more generous coverage.”

“For the last several years there has been significant growth in the market for private medical insurance. This product has a higher frequency of claims than most other employee benefit products and is now establishing itself as a product that Norwegians appreciate and expect from their employer.

“Because of increased expectations and increased strain on public finances, more Norwegians are looking to private companies for some of their healthcare and healthcare related services. This is a priority area of business development for Gjensidige. In recent years we have launched online mental healthcare service and general online healthcare service.”

“Another important cover that separates generous and less generous employee benefits programmes, is the full-time disability cover.”

“Differences in the scope of Social Security, the dynamics of trade unions and other legal and regulatory issues makes the Norwegian employee benefits market different from other markets in Europe. There are also notable differences between Norway and the other Nordic countries. To my knowledge only Norway has products that cover permanent work-related disability with lump-sum compensation.”

Employee benefits case study – Maersk

To understand the situation for a major employer, we spoke to Dana Voss, Global Benefits & Wellbeing at Maersk. Maersk is a Danish logistics company, headquartered in Copenhagen, with around 95,000 employees worldwide.

Hi Dana, thanks for speaking with us. Can you give us a summary of how you manage global employee benefits and the journey to get to this point?

“Prior to 2015, we had very little central visibility of our global benefits landscape. At that time, Maersk was a conglomerate of some nine brands, present in 130+ countries and each with licence to operate independently of each other, even when co-located or in close geographical proximity. Initial efforts to gather information and data using a single internal resource proved insufficient to make meaningful progress, and this led to the appointment of Mercer Marsh Benefits (MMB), and its army of local resources, as sole global broker early in 2016.

“With MMBs support, and by making their appointment mandatory through our corporate governance framework, we were able to get visibility of the plans, policies, and providers we had in place, harmonise, and standardise to a significant degree and ultimately progress to the captive model and reinsurance agreements we have with two preferred provider networks today.

“The licencing of our captive insurer (Maersk Insurance A/S) to write EB  lines of business in February 2020 has enabled us to become efficient from a risk and cost perspective, and that helps to drive global principles down into our benefit programmes, even where programmes remain outside of the captive.” 

How has your global programme enabled you to have success managing employee benefits?

“Not surprisingly, sustainable success has taken time. The roadmap was always intended to be iterative, starting with global broking, leveraging global underwriting, and culminating in the use of our captive, wherever feasible. The mandated appointment of MMB helped to get traction quickly but came at the expense of taking time to share the compelling story, and winning hearts and minds. That has come later though and allows productive discussions with all stakeholders on optimal solutions at a plan level. The process has improved significantly over the years, and we continue to make this more streamlined and efficient, to the benefit of all involved – global and local Maersk and MMB, preferred networks and their local partners.”

You’re a large employer in the Nordic region, is your approach to benefits in this region different to anywhere else in the world?

“No, our approach is a global one. In 2018, following a deep strategic review of rewards, we defined a benefits strategy based on eight core minimum benefits that all employees working for Maersk should enjoy, irrespective of local market practice. These elements reflect our company values and our corporate identity while acknowledging feedback from employees who were invited to input as part of our review.

“Employees told us they valued the protection we had traditionally provided in adversity, and so our foundations are built on addressing the consequences of unforeseen events – including illness, accident, involuntary termination - and on helping them get healthy and stay well through employee assistance, vacation, and wellbeing. Saying thank you for loyal service and recognition for a job well done are also important elements of our global minimum standards.”