Spaniards sleep fewer hours and work longer days than their European neighbors, but are less productive. At the same time Spain fails to attract overseas talent, while tens of thousands of well-educated Spanish youngsters are heading abroad in search of work. The country also has one of the EU’s highest school drop-out rates and a work culture hostile to the needs of families with young children. Meanwhile, its birth rate is fast approaching negative as its population ages.
It’s long been a cliché that Spain is a great place to live but a terrible country to work, and over the last five years, as the economic crisis has bitten deeper, many of those lucky enough still to have a job are finding themselves working harder, often for lower wages and with fewer resources, as their employers strive for greater competitiveness. While it’s true that official figures for the average number of working hours have fallen in recent years, to 1,699 per year, this number is still significantly higher than in Germany (1,362), or France (1,489).
A 2012 survey by global consultancy Reputation Institute shows that a significant majority of people in G-8 countries believe that Spain is indeed a great place to live, but one of the worst in which to invest or purchase quality goods. What’s more, the image of the land of the siesta endures for a good reason, says one Spanish researcher, who has lived abroad for many years and studied working habits throughout the world.
Her conclusions are damning: “The clichés about Spain are more or less true. Despite the crisis, this is still a great place to live: the climate, the food, the healthcare and education systems, the way people interact with each other… In this country, you’re not going to die in the street or at the entrance to a hospital, like you could in the United States due to a lack of health insurance. But let’s admit it, working practices are poor, we’re not really professional about our work. You see it in taxi drivers, civil servants, aerospace engineers; in just about every profession,” she says.
“For one thing, the professional and personal spheres are not separated in the workplace, which gives rise to false loyalties and conflicts; also, employees are rarely given clear goals, instead simply focusing on meeting deadlines. Then there are the long working days with two-hour lunches. Bosses are mediocre, yet behave like gods, unable, or unwilling to explain themselves. Meanwhile, everybody says they’re bilingual, but actually, they’re not. Furthermore, this is still a country where everybody hopes to get rich quick, where people scheme and plot, where personal or family contacts are everything, and where junk television influences the way people think they should earn a living.”
Ramón Castreana, the head of human resources at power company Iberdrola, has also spent many years working abroad and disagrees with much of that analysis. He argues that some Spaniards are highly professional, especially those who have gone to work abroad. “I can tell you from personal experience those whom I have met overseas are well trained, and adapt very well, much better than their English-speaking counterparts.”
But Jaime Malet, head of the US-Spanish Chamber of Commerce, accepts that among the problems Spain faces are widespread nepotism, absenteeism, and fewer incentives to improve productivity, along with a refusal to recognize and reward talent. He comes back to those marathon working days: “Productivity would increase if office hours were more rational. People don’t sleep enough and they tend to have no life outside work. We have to move toward a more compact working day, by reducing lunch breaks. He also says that bringing the prime-time slot on television forward by an hour to 9pm, as in the rest of Europe, or North America, would also help.
According to Javier Noya, a lecturer in political science at Madrid’s Complutense University, the figures speak for themselves, pointing to the OECD’s 2013 annual report, which puts Spain in 13th place out of 30 countries for productivity, on a par with Greece and Italy. A survey by leading Spanish bank BBVA puts Spain in top place when it comes to social issues: the number of friends people have here, the time they spend in the street, and drinking in bars. This is a point worth noting, says Noya, because Spaniards spend more time contacting friends and families on the social networks: “In Germany, a meeting at work usually lasts half-an-hour, or an hour at most, but here, we stretch it out to two hours, because we talk about soccer, the weather, the family.”
At the same time, most Spaniards who work, or have recent memories of doing so, would probably admit that they spend more time chatting with colleagues about non-work-related matters or answering personal emails than their counterparts in other countries. In which case, will the Spanish have to sacrifice this sociability in the workplace? Perhaps loving one’s work is not in itself the antidote to depression, while earning one’s salary need not require giving everything up to get the job done.
Toni Ferrer of labor union UGT says that a good workplace atmosphere and job satisfaction have a positive impact on productivity, in the same way that poor organization, being forced to work long hours, and being constantly interrupted have a negative one. A study by multinational consultancy Regus gives Spain a work-life balance score of 97, compared to the global average of 120, and concludes that just one third of Spaniards are happy about the amount of time they are able to spend with their families, compared to an average 60 percent in all other countries.
Ignacio Buqueras, president of the Commission for the Rationalization of Working Hours (Arhoe), says that on average Spaniards get 53 minutes less sleep than their European neighbors, which impacts on productivity and accidents in the workplace. “What’s more, our children don’t sleep enough either. Instead of looking to do our best while at work, ours is a culture of being seen to be working,” he says.
All of which is why Carmen Quintanilla, head of the Equality Committee in Spain’s Congress, says the time has come for a national debate on working practices, which hit Spanish women, and the country’s birth rate, particularly hard. “How can it be that Spanish women have to choose between being a mother or having a career?” she asks.
That said, Spain’s automated manufacturing plants are among the most productive in Europe: “We work more hours, and at a faster pace than the majority of other countries,” says a sector employee.
“I think the Spanish are as productive as the Germans, although they have a different concept of work,” says Margareta Hauschild, director of the Madrid branch of the Goethe Institut, Germany’s worldwide cultural and language-teaching organization. “Unlike Germany, where for many people work is a place to express yourself and achieve personal goals, in Spain, few people want to work for the pleasure of doing so. Both in my private and public spheres, my experience is that people here do their jobs, but I come across a lot of people who are very anxious to find a position for life, they’re obsessed with security. And then, despite the high drop-out rate and youth unemployment, everybody wants their children to go to university rather than learn a trade, something that is still looked down on here. I also see strong resistance to labor market reforms and a negative view of employers, although workers here have more rights than in Germany, for example,” she says.
Anything to say?
[source : el pais]