Rekryteringsstrategier för företag inom skogssektorn : en undersökning om hur skogsbrukande och träförädlande företag bygger sitt arbetsgivarvarumärke

Abstract: The forest industry is anonymous among the young people of today. Many youngsters do not know what the forest industry has to offer. As a result of this, many schools and forest have a weak recruitment. This is not a problem for Sweden and the forest industry only, many other businesses companies suffer from in Sweden and other countries in Europe share the same image problem. The interest and values of young people drives them to look for opportunities in other betterknown sectors with better image and reputation. Many companies report having problems with recruiting the best and right employees and fear that the recruiting-problems will increase when the older generation born in the 1940's will retire. This is seen as a problem due to the fact that those who are born in the 1940's are more numerous than the younger people are. The purpose with this study is to examine recruiting-strategies, future recruitment, and how forest-companies work to build their employer brand/image. I also look into what kind of competence the forest sector will look for in the future. A qualitative method has been used to achieve the purpose. Fourteen interviews were done. Eleven of the companies are forestcompanies and two other non-forest companies were chosen. These two companies have been chosen to comparison and because they were well known for their employer brand. An additional interview was also done with Föreningen Skogsindustrierna. The forest-companies were characterized into geography, size and enterprise. The result shows that most of the forest-companies do not see any major problems or threats in the future recruitment. To prevent future problems, some companies have deliberately recruited young employees in an effort to even out the often-high average age. The study also shows that it will be more difficult to find and recruit workers, such as forest workers and blue-collar workers, than it will be to find employees with a higher education. It also points out that only a few of the companies have developed strategies to improve the cooperation and partnership with forest workers and entrepreneurs. The conclusion is that employers should make strategies of how they are going to keep and improve the image that they have at present.