A 60-year-old photograph made Stig Nyman wonder: Can data turn the Danish model upside down?

Data has become a central tool in many HR departments. New technology has enabled the monitoring of everything from meeting activity to email habits, and companies collect vast amounts of data to enhance performance and well-being.

While data collection can often benefit both employees and management, there are also pitfalls, as new research from Copenhagen Business School (CBS) shows.

“We need to ask ourselves: who actually benefits from the data being collected? If the employer always gets to set the agenda, it influences which decisions are made and which are not,” says Stig Nyman, postdoc at CBS and leader of the research group that has spent years examining the issue published in this scientific article.

Thus, the stage is set for Stig Nyman to take over the baton from Naja Holten Møller, who participated in the previous edition of DIREC’s Researcher Relay series.

Read that article here.

The battle for data has shifted

In the mid-20th century, trade unions were eager to use data as a foundation for political decisions to improve working conditions. This became clear to Stig Nyman when he discovered a 1960s photograph in the archives of The Workers Museum in Copenhagen, depicting three union representatives observing a seamstress while taking notes with the aim of improving working conditions. However, the use of data in the labor movement has since been overtaken by the employers.

“Today, employers use data far more than employees. When data collection is primarily driven by employers, there is a risk that it is used for control rather than improving working conditions,” says Stig Nyman. He continues:

“If, for example, the labor movement begins to collect and use more data strategically, it could become a valuable tool for documenting workload, improving conditions, and strengthening employees’ voices in negotiations.”

High stress and speeding tickets

Through collaborations with Danish trade unions FOA and HK, Stig Nyman and his team have investigated how labor organizations can collect and utilize data to shed light on workplace challenges such as time pressure and workload.

The researchers organized workshops for union representatives, employing the “Artefacts from the Future” method to explore the opportunities and dilemmas of data collection.

They developed a fictional app for home care union representatives, which included data analysis based on GPS data collected from FOA members. The data revealed that many employees frequently exceeded speed limits during work hours.

“Several participants reported having received speeding tickets because they felt pressured to drive too fast between care visits. For them, the fictional data analysis made the problem visible. Their reactions demonstrate how data has the power to make invisible issues—such as working conditions—visible,” explains Stig Nyman.

Balancing the Danish model

Ultimately, the question of data collection lays the foundation for rethinking the Danish model, according to Stig Nyman. Data collection will require investments in technological infrastructure to ensure that data is stored and managed by the labor movement itself—not by employers.

But is it even the role of the labor movement to collect and store data, and would members be willing to pay for it? These are some of the questions the researchers are addressing.

“With data, whoever pays the piper calls the tune. But if we want to create a balance of power in the labor market, this is a conversation we need to initiate,” says Stig Nyman.

In the coming years, Stig Nyman and his team will explore the potential for data collection across different societal groups. In the meantime, he passes the baton to Louise Harder Fischer, Associate Professor at ITU, with the following question:

“If an organization wants to implement artificial intelligence, what is the most important thing to consider?