A manager is responsible for a team reaching its goals: leading and developing people, dividing the work, keeping to a budget, looking after the work environment and making decisions others carry out. According to Statistics Sweden’s labour force survey, over 355,000 people worked in management occupations in Sweden in 2025.
What does a manager do?
A manager gets things done through other people. That sets the job apart from almost every other, where the result is what you do yourself.
The everyday work is of three kinds. The first is the operation: goals, planning, budget, follow-up and decisions about what the team will and will not do. The second is the people: recruitment, induction, development reviews, pay reviews, feedback and the conversations nobody wants to have. The third is the organisation around the team: management meetings, reporting upwards and working with other departments.
The share of each shifts with level. A first-line manager in a warehouse or a home care team spends most time on people and daily operations. A manager of managers spends more time on goals, budget and organisation. The job stays the same: making sure the team can do what it is there for.
What is the difference between a manager and a leader?
Manager is a position. Leader is a role others give you by following. A manager has formal responsibility for people, budget and decisions, and that responsibility stays whether the team follows or not.
A good manager is also a leader, but leadership can be exercised without the title. A project manager leads without line responsibility, and an experienced colleague can be the person the team listens to. That is why there are courses such as Leading Others Without Being a Manager from Kunskapsgruppen. People who want to become managers have often practised leadership in a role like that first.
What responsibility does a manager have for the work environment?
In Sweden the employer always keeps the responsibility for the work environment, but the tasks are assigned to managers. The Swedish Work Environment Authority’s regulations AFS 2023:1 require, in section 9, that the employer assigns the tasks of systematic health and safety work to one or more managers, supervisors or other employees. The assignment must be in writing if the organisation has ten or more employees.
For the manager that means risk assessments, safety inspections, following up sick leave and acting when someone is being harmed by their work. The manager’s own work environment is often forgotten. The Authority carried out almost 1,100 inspections of first-line managers’ work environment in the private sector between June 2022 and December 2023, and in 65 percent of cases it required the workplace to fix shortcomings. “A manager is also an employee, who needs a good work environment to be good support for others,” said Malin Cato, labour inspector and project manager at the Authority, when the report came out in April 2024 (our translation).
How many people does a manager have reporting to them?
A Swedish manager had on average 17.0 direct reports in 2025, according to the salary survey of Ledarna, the Swedish union for managers. The figure was 18.5 in 2016. First-line managers have the most, 19.5 on average.
The number decides how much time the manager has for each person. Every employee needs a development review, a pay review and follow-up, and that work grows with the team.
What is the hardest part of being a manager?
The workload. In Ledarna’s survey Att vara chef 2023, answered by just over 1,600 managers, 42 percent said their workload was always or often unevenly spread so that work piles up, and 32 percent that they did not have time for their tasks. 36 percent had considered leaving their management role at least once a month during the past year.
The same managers like the job. 91 percent said their work almost always feels meaningful, up from 87 percent in 2019. The job is meaningful and heavy at the same time.
How do you become a manager?
Many people become managers internally, after a few years as a specialist, team lead or project manager in the same organisation. Others are recruited from outside into a management post. There is no formal education requirement, but many employers give new managers a leadership course shortly before or after they start.
Management occupations are growing. According to Statistics Sweden’s labour force survey, over 355,000 people worked in management occupations in 2025, compared with nearly 280,000 in 2015, and just over 155,000 of them were women. Andreas Miller, chair of Ledarna, writes in the foreword to Att vara chef 2023 that the need to recruit new managers remains high in Sweden, and that the job therefore has to be attractive.
Which leadership courses are there?
The range divides by where you are in a management career. New as a Manager from EFL Executive Education is for people who have recently taken the step. Manager and Leader from SSE Executive Education is a programme for managers who want to develop their leadership. UGL from Aktivt Ledarskap, short for the Swedish “Developing Group and Leader”, trains how a group works and how you yourself affect it. The Manager’s Most Difficult Conversations from Kompetenstjänst takes on what many managers find hardest. The leadership category gathers more than 1,400 courses from over 100 providers.
What should you look for in a course?
Start with the outcome, written as something you will be able to do afterwards: hold a pay review, have a difficult conversation, lead a team through a change. Then check whether the course gives you time to practise between sessions, since leadership is trained in your own working week. Make sure the provider has a coherent catalog in leadership, and pick a format that fits around your management job. The same checks run through the guide to choosing the right course.
Every course on True Upskill issues a verifiable credential, so an employer can check it at its source in seconds instead of calling the provider.
Put it together
A manager gets things done through other people: leads the team, divides the work, keeps the budget and carries the tasks of health and safety work. Sweden had over 355,000 people in management occupations in 2025, and according to Ledarna a manager has 17 direct reports on average. In Ledarna’s 2023 survey nine in ten found the job meaningful, and more than a third had considered leaving it at least once a month. Start with the leadership category and pick the course that answers what you need to be able to do as a manager.
FAQ
What does a manager do?
A manager is responsible for a team or operation reaching its goals. That means leading and developing people, dividing the work, keeping to a budget, taking care of the work environment and making decisions that others carry out. The manager represents the employer to their team.
What is the difference between a manager and a leader?
Manager is a formal position with responsibility for people, budget and decisions. A leader is someone others follow. A good manager is also a leader, but leadership can be exercised without the title, for example by a project manager or an experienced colleague.
What responsibility does a manager have for the work environment in Sweden?
The employer always keeps the responsibility for the work environment, but under the Swedish Work Environment Authority's regulations AFS 2023:1 it must assign the tasks of systematic health and safety work to managers, supervisors or other employees. The assignment must be in writing if the organisation has ten or more employees.
How many people does a manager have reporting to them?
According to the Swedish managers' union Ledarna, a manager had on average 17.0 direct reports in 2025, down from 18.5 in 2016. First-line managers have the most.
How do you become a manager?
Many people become managers internally, after a few years as a specialist or project manager in the same organisation. It is common to take a leadership course shortly before or after starting, focused on employment law, the work environment, difficult conversations and leading a group.