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Which country offers the best life-work balance?
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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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How is work-life balance measured? Is this self-reported data? What does the percentage mean?
From their website:
""" Life-work balance is an evolving definition, describing how we juggle our personal lives alongside the demands of our careers. Remote has coined the term to describe the increasing trend of people putting life first and work second.
Strong life-work balance extends beyond the ability to work from home. Measuring life-work balance with accuracy considers a number of the most important impacting factors ranging from payment rate to inclusivity. Putting Europe to the test, we conducted an index data analysis to reveal the top countries to live and work across the old continent. Would you consider a move abroad in search of a greater balance between your personal life and career?
The European Life-Work Balance Index assesses focuses on the countries situated in Europe, ranking the quality of life-work balance across each nation. The index considers a variety of vital factors including:
"""
Kind of arbitrary set of data to be calling a work life balance index, but what do I know...
My German roomie would get a kick out of Sweden and Germany being side by side. Anecdotal of course but I don’t think he’d agree.
For starters, he hasn’t been almost killed at his job here in Sweden, even though truck driver is probably a more dangerous job than his old office job. No flying saw blades here.
Germans are notoriously grumpy so we'll always be at the bottom at anything that tries to measure happiness.
To be fair though, Germany seems like a miserable place to work. Outdated tech, weird social hierarchies, expected overtime, free labour by exploiting students.
Your experience in Germany doesn't really seem typical. And social hierarchies will appear weird in any foreign country.
He's definitely right about the overtime and students.
Anywhere that has a union is not expecting overtime. In fact it is counted and you can take the time off that you accumulated.
The only time i ever got overtime back as holiday leave was in Germany. That was great!
I think I had something stupid like 43 days off that year (including the base 6-weeks)
That’s standard here in Sweden.
What isn’t standard is forcing students to work extra. There are also limits on how much time certain professions can work, mostly for safety reasons. If you work as a trucker you are only allowed to drive for so many hours before forcing a break, and only so many hours in the span of 24 hours and a week.
As far as I know, Germany has a decent set of labour laws but the follow up on infractions is scarce.
I’ve a friend that works 60-80 hours a week while juggling his uni degree. The work is part of it as far as I understand. Thus his pay is also not in accordance with the role he has. In short, exploitation.
Sure I’d rather live and work in Germany any day, but if given the option, I’d not leave Sweden.
Relevant:
https://youtu.be/dJdCJMyBi5I?si=DJgs7bVedicduPBz
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https://piped.video/dJdCJMyBi5I?si=DJgs7bVedicduPBz
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Sure, LGBTQ+ inclusivity is good. But is it at all related to work-life balance?
Having looked at this, they have a few things that aren't quite right. But that's not surprising given how tough it is to compare countries that define things differently.
I've only lived recently in Germany and the UK, so I can speak for those, but for example the "maternity" comparison is very skewed because of the (admittedly confusing) way that Germany defines "paid time with your child after they are born". There are basically two phases to it, with different names and conditions. The first is the 14 weeks of 100% pay which is listed on the website, but afterwards there is what's called Elternzeit ("parents time") which is partially paid (starts at 65% if I remember right) and is at least 14 months, but can be extended with slightly different conditions.
So the vast majority of the benefit is not being included in this comparison.
https://remote.com/resources/research/european-life-work-balance-index
Edit:
What indicators would be better suiting? Working hours and work-life balance sounds quite suiting.
So much sass. Lol