“Many Spaniards spend too much time in the office, but in our case, if you compare it with the past, things have changed a lot,” says Maria Reig, head of Human Resources at the company. “Turning off the lights at a predetermined time or not organising meetings from a certain time onwards are helping to change the situation,” says García.Īnother company offering flexible working to its 100-plus employees is Tecalum, which produces aluminium parts in Girona, north eastern Spain. Her firm is one of an growing number of Spanish companies encouraging their employees to embrace a more flexible working culture and making a concerted effort to move away from the old culture of presentismo.Īccording to a 2015 study by management software company Sage, 80% of small and medium-sized businesses in Spain are in favour of implementing measures that would improve the work-life balance for workers. “During the economic crisis there were abuses in work schedules, the fear of losing your job was very strong,” agrees Susana Pascual García, an environmental scientist at ACEFAT, a small business in Barcelona managing public infrastructure projects. The fear is perhaps stronger in Spain than other countries because of the severe effect the economic crisis had on the country combined with its historic tendency towards presentismo. The fear of losing their jobs has also made Spanish workers far more sceptical of using flexible working policies, says Grau. A deep-seated fear of losing their jobs has left many Spanish employees spending even more time at their desks. The unemployment rate has dropped since then, but was 18.8% for the first quarter of 2017, still the second highest in the European Union after Greece. In the wake of recession, in 2013, Spain’s unemployment rose to 27%, while in the same year youth unemployment reached a record 56.1%. While presentismo has been an issue in Spain for decades, it has become especially prevalent since the most recent global economic crisis hit the country. It can affect motivation, job performance, work satisfaction, life satisfaction and it obviously has an effect on family life.” “ Presentismo may seem good in the short term but it is tremendously pervasive in the long term. “It is particularly prevalent in Spain due to the old mentality in traditional companies of more hours equals more work, and long working hours because of the long lunch break in many companies. “ Presentismo is spending hours more than you really need to at work in order to seem more serious and committed to your organisation,” said Marc Grau, a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and an expert in work-life balance. Instead, many Spanish businesses are afflicted by presentismo, or presenteeism. Spain’s evidently longer working hours do not equal more productivity. Here, few people have a siesta, but the long working day appears to have remained ingrained in the culture. Then between the early 1950s and early 1980s, Spain experienced unprecedented migration from rural areas to its cities, where the majority of its citizens now work. The two hour break allowed workers, especially those in rural areas, time to rest or travel after the first job ended. This disjointed day came about because in post Civil War Spain, many people worked two jobs to support their families, one in the morning and one in the late afternoon. Traditionally, the Spanish working day was split into two distinct parts: people would work from 9am until 2pm, stop for a two hour lunch break and return to work from 4pm until around 8pm. If we bear in mind that they divided periods of light into 12 hours, then the sixth hour corresponds in Spain to the period between 1pm (in winter) and 3pm (in summer).” “The Romans stopped to eat and rest at the sixth hour of the day. “The word siesta comes from the Latin sexta,” explains Juan José Ortega, vice president of the Spanish Society of Sleep and a somnologist - an expert in sleep medicine. So what has led a nation famous in part for its supposedly casual attitude to labour to become one of the hardest working in Europe?īefore tackling this question, it is perhaps worth pausing to consider that the siesta does not originally come from Spain at all - it is from Italy. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Spaniards rack up 1,691 hours at work each year while British workers do 1,674 annually and the Germans work just 1,371 hours a year. In fact, the Spanish spend far more time working than many of their counterparts in Europe. Almost 60% of Spaniards never have a siesta, while just 18% will sometimes have a midday nap, according to a recent survey.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |