In an ever-changing and challenging world, multinational companies will forever strive for the most effective and competitive business operation, which by nature will mean that jobs will be placed where the cost is lowest, and the talent pool is highest. At the same time, companies will often wish to streamline the business and centralize functions to avoid duplicate roles to limit inefficiency and unnecessary operational costs.
For most companies, ongoing adjustments will mean restructuring the organization, even in situations where there is no overall reduction in cost, just a need to change focus with respect to territories, products, skills, etc. When carrying out restructurings across the Nordics, companies are usually met with a series of employment-related questions that often need to be aligned across jurisdictions. However, even though Denmark, Sweden, and Norway share common foundations, the employment rules normally vary to some extent.
One question that we see increasingly being raised as part of cross-border restructurings in the Nordics is whether companies are required to offer affected employees open positions in other jurisdictions.
The short answer is maybe. Companies do not have statutory cross-border redeployment obligations in Denmark, Norway, or Sweden. However, the conclusion is often challenged by the affected employees (and unions) and relevant case law suggests that the answer could be clarified further in practice, especially considering recent developments under Norwegian employment law. Also, different circumstances can affect the answer in practice, including that it is a requirement within all three countries that a termination must be justified to not trigger claims for compensation. Although that should usually be the case in the scenario of a restructuring, it does not prevent employees from mixing redeployment considerations into business decisions to challenge if there is in fact a real redundancy resulting from the restructuring or not.
For that reason, it is necessary to consider the national redeployment obligations to consider how far the rights can be stretched in practice.
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