Comparison of work-life balance: France, Germany and India

Abstract

Work-life balance is an increasingly important aspect of HR policy, both for employees while looking for a job and for employers while looking to attract great talent. As employees look to carve out time from their work lives for themselves and their families, tensions can develop between them and their employers, who are increasingly looking to be more competitive both internationally and domestically. This study looks at the similarities and differences between the work-life balance practices of white collar employees across three countries - France, Germany and India, through means of both primary research (survey and FGDs) and secondary research.From the primary research we derived many insights, the following are some key observations. Indians and Germans want marginally lesser number of working hours however, it is seen that the French are ready to work for more hours compared to the current average. France and India have lower sensitivity towards work-life balance w.r.t number of working hours as compared to Germany. It was observed that the initial and later years of life are seen to have high work-life balance while the intermediate years have low work-life balance. Amongst the three countries, Germany has the highest policy awareness while France has the least. India seems to be more sensitive towards flexible hours compared to the other countries. Data revealed that the presence or absence of spouse or kids does not affect the desire for a good WLB. Data also indicated that work-life balance is very critical in choice of profession and organization across countries. In addition, work-life balance plays a really important role in deciding the choice of organization in comparison to that of a profession.For further research, it would be interesting to expand the scope of this study and explore related areas. Future studies could look at work-life balance for blue-collar workers, perform sector-specific analysis, comparing India against the European Union as a whole, understand the cultural differences between the countries under comparison and use them to better understand the causes of difference in work-life balance and study the impact of immigration on work-life balance.