Swedish: ute i enheterna

G

Gavril

Senior Member
English, USA
Excerpt from an interview with a retiring IKEA employee, about her struggles during the Covid period:

Vi satt i krisgruppen dag och natt och vi jobbade tillsammans i ledningsgruppen, vi jobbade med krisgrupperna ute i enheterna och med ledningsgrupperna ute i enheterna och vi försökte manövrera och bibehålla säkerheten för människorna i detta.
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"We sat in the crisis group day and night, and we worked together in the management group, we worked with the crisis groups [????] and with the management groups [????], and we tried to maneuver and maintain people's safety in all this."

"ute" and "enhet" both have a huge range of potential meanings, and I can't resolve what is intended here.

Ideally, I should consult a source at IKEA about this, but:
Does anyone happen to know (or have a likely suspicion about) what "ute i enheterna" means here?

Thanks,
Gavril
 
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    • Gavril said:
    Excerpt from an interview with a retiring IKEA employee, about her struggles during the Covid period:



    "We sat in the crisis group day and night, and we worked together in the management group, we worked with the crisis groups [????] and with the management groups [????], and we tried to maneuver and maintain people's safety in all this."

    "ute" and "enhet" both have a huge range of potential meanings, and I can't resolve what is intended here.

    Ideally, I should consult a source at IKEA about this, but:
    Does anyone happen to know (or have a likely suspicion about) what "ute i enheterna" means here?

    Thanks,
    Gavril
    Click to expand...
    Most probably "enheterna" means local IKEA sales units (warehouses).
     
    Hejsan! Ikea wrote this in a job ad: "Nu söker våra olika enheter i Stockholm; Barkarby, Gallerian och Kungens Kurva nya medarbetare med start i januari/februari 2023/.../ På de flesta av våra enheter är vi indelade i flera olika områden där vi möter kund. Nedan kommer en kort beskrivning på de olika arbetsuppgifterna inom varje område. Du kommer vid ansökningstillfället att välja vilket område du skulle vara intresserad av. Observera att på IKEA Gallerian är områdena Sälj, Customer Experience, Logistik och Recovery ihopslagna. Så läs igenom och matcha in dig själv. Vart skulle du trivas?"

    So I guess enheterna simply means "stores".

    Allt gott!
    A
     
    Hallå!

    Yes, i agree with the other answers. Enheter usually to describe a specific group in an organisation, den här enheten ('this unit'). It is sometime combined into one: polisenheten ('unit of polices'). Atleast in this context. In other context it can refer to geometric in math, for example, to calculate en måttenhet, a size of something.

    // Skuggan
     
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    skuggan said:
    Enheter usually to describe a specific group in an organisation, den här enheten ('this unit'). It is sometime combined into one: polisenheten ('unit of polices').
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    Just realised we have police and military units in English too. Also buildings on business/industrial parks are called units. But not business sub-divisions, or out-of-town stores, as far as I know. Not that it really matters as far as Swedish is concerned of course, but spotting similarities and differences with other languages helps me remember stuff.
     
    Thanks for the replies!

    This use of enhet reminds me of the use of avdelning to mean "ward (in a hospital)". If we were to translate avdelning simply as "division"/"department" instead, then a lot of hospital-related sentences in Swedish would no longer make much sense (for example, sentences that draw a contrast between avdelning and mottagning).

    Likewise, if we were to translate enhet simply as "department" (or similar) in the quoted context, it would lead to the strange conclusion that the interviewed IKEA employee is not in a department (since the enheter are something that she went out to).

    However, it's very easy to consult a Swedish dictionary and see "hospital ward" listed as a meaning of avdelning, whereas this use of enhet seems to require special research into IKEA's internal argot.
     
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    The word enhet is very common in use in hospital administration, as well as when talking about specific "sections/units" under a hospital department. The emergency department (akutkliniken, enhet akutmottagningen) where I work is divided into five separate enheter, in English those might be called divisions or sections.
     
    AutumnOwl said:
    The word enhet is very common in use in hospital administration, as well as when talking about specific "sections/units" under a hospital department. The emergency department (akutkliniken, enhet akutmottagningen) where I work is divided into five separate enheter, in English those might be called divisions or sections.
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    "Units" are also common in UK hospitals, but there seems to be a number of different ways to use term.
    hospital unit Definition | Law Insider
     
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