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:
Healthcare
Minimum wage
Maternity leave
Statutory annual leave
Sick pay
Overall happiness levels
Average working hours
LGBTQ+ inclusivity
“”"
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 Outdated tech, weird social hierarchies, expected overtime, free labour by exploiting students.
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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.
- Google the source
- click at the first finding
- scroll down to Methodology
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.
The UK being that high makes me feel very sorry for everyone in the countries ranked lower
Yeah, we moved from Germany to the UK a year or so ago and are about to move back pretty much specifically because of this.
Maybe it’s just London, but here there is a really prevalent “hustle culture” and everyone is doing things like joining work calls during their holidays or not having a lunch break and then working 9 hours anyways.
Not to mention you get less holidays and things like being sick or maternity leave are terrible headaches in comparison.
So all in all, for us at least its been a shock! Ib would be interested to know what metrics they are using for work-life balance, because it likely doesn’t match what I would choose.
It’s weird tho, because Austria is ranked way lower, but in my experience it ain’t that bad
I think the problem is that it’s difficult to think of this on a country-by-country basis. I’m in the UK. One of my friends works for a hedge fund in London and has an appalling work-life balance, long hours, little opportunity to work-from-home. Another works for a charity based in London while working-from-home in a regional city for all but one day of the month, and works reasonable hours and gets every other Friday off. My own experience is somewhere in the middle. The difference between our individual experiences in the UK will dwarf the differences between the UK and another European country.
I can completely believe that your own relative experiences of Austria and the UK could be very different to what’s shown in the diagram because work-life balance is so much more dependent on what line of work you’re in, who your employer is, what stage you’re at in your career, etc. Except in extreme cases, these things will count for more than national differences.
Another reason it can be tough is that certain metrics are defined differently between counties.
Many metrics will list the UK a having one of the highest holiday allowances in Europe since legally full-time workers are entitles to 28 days off, however the UK includes Bank Holidays (8-9 days) in this total. For comparison, a country like Austria has a minimum of 5 weeks holiday (25 days) but this is IN ADDITION TO state holidays (of which there are 13, but some will be on weekends so the absolute amount varies year to year). Centrally this end up with everyone in Austria having something like 33-34 days off.
I’ve yet to see a list that accounts for this, so most have the UK right near the top. I would bet that this metric is no different.
Having worked in the Netherlands, UK, and Germany my 2 cents is that this rings untrue to my industry.
Italy and Ireland. However the point I fluffed making is that W/L Balance in the UK is much lower.
Afaik, people don’t live in Luxemburg. The city appears to be busy during the day and almost empty at night since most people working there, actually live abroad in Germany or Belgium.
UK is included but not Switzerland?
