Comparing Working Conditions around the world

If we are all being totally honest, there can’t be many people out there reading this who haven’t moaned about their working conditions at some time. Whether it be linked to the amount of holiday we get, the level of pay, the amount of hours we work, or, as a woman, the maternity allowance, we often think that we might find things very different if we lived in a different country.

GoToMeeting decided to make a comparison between working conditions around the world, and published their findings in the form of a very interesting infographic. As well as the areas I already mentioned below, GoToMeeting also looked at separate issues including the amount of time people spent in different jobs before moving on to different employment, whether you were able to request flexible working laws and how many paid sick days we are entitled to. The results make for very interesting, and some quite surprising reading.

For me, this infographic shows that the best working conditions would be a mixture of what we currently have, combined with some of the ideas of Europe and Australia. I think the Swedish idea of trialing a shorter working day is interesting and could be positive in terms of productivity – how much work is done in the last hour of an eight hour day when people are winding down? The Swedish idea of unions to formulate rates of pay rather than having a minimum wage is also interesting, but Sweden is also the country that has only 12 weeks, unpaid maternity leave – one of the lowest on offer.

What do you think of the results from this survey? Were you surprised by anything you read? I would love to know your thoughts so please leave a comment below stating what you think, or any personal observations about the UK’s working conditions.

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