Comparing work cultures
Brown Thomas luxury store in Dublin, Ireland. Photo: U-g-g-B-o-y-(-Photograph-World-Sens e-) / Flickr Creative Commons
One of the most eye-opening moments when working abroad is finding about all the differences between your host culture and home culture. For example, a Japanese salaryman might accept unpaid overtime as business as usual. A French worker, on the other hand, might disagree with staying beyond normal business hours.
Salon.com did a detailed comparison of the work cultures Germany and the United States: Were you born on the wrong continent?
There is a bit of that old cliché message that “Americans live to work, while Europeans work to live.” However, the interviewee does point out some specific examples about how German’s quality-of-life stacks up.
The article dives into some of the historical differences between how workers are regulated. There were some surprises in how the two countries were actually connected on policy matters.
One key point was that the article suggested GDP might be a misguided way to measure “success.” Albert Einstein put it best: “Many of the things you can count, don’t count. Many of the things you can’t count, really count.”
Have you worked abroad? What were some differences between the work cultures of your host and home countries? Please share your experiences in the comments.
October 1st, 2010 at 3:57 pm
My wife is a nurse in the U.S.A. and she has sisters living in Canada, and Germany, who work in nursing and health care related occupations. Based on conversations I’ve heard between them, it is easy to tell that nurses work a lot harder in the U.S. than they do in other developed countries. They make more, but they have to work a lot more to get it. I don’t like to talk about work much when I’m traveling, and don’t necessarily like to make direct comparisons with work cultures, but it’s pretty obvious to me, from talking to relatives in Canada, England and Germany, that we work a lot more hours here, across the board, and have less time to do other things. Many Americans don’t have time to do necessities let alone think about travel and the wonderful benefits of it. I agree with the article mentioned above; we are short sighted.
October 4th, 2010 at 10:28 am
I am German and I work in the US. I think that it’s true that Americans work more hours, but they don’t neccessarily work harder. There seems to be much more downtime during worktime than there is in Germany. Plus, I believe that if I get my longer vacations (without checking in with work all the time), I come back much more relaxed and ready to focus again which makes me more productive I think.