Work-life balance: Who does it best? Citizens in this European country work less and take more personal time (1364 hits)
By Nadine Bells | Daily Brew – Mon, 6 Jun, 2011
The best place to live for work-life balance Citizens in this European country work less and take more personal time: study.
That was the question Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) attempted to answer.
Their conclusion: Denmark.
The OECD looked at data from 34 countries, assessing work-life balance in their well-being index, the Better Life Initiative. For the study, the balance was determined by three indicators: time devoted to personal activities, employment rate of women with children between the ages of 6 and 14, and the number of employees working over 50 hours a week.
Belgians topped the "personal time" category, with an impressive 16.61 hours a day of time off. (Canadians have 14.97 hours outside of work, which is still lower than the OECD average.)
Northern European countries proved least likely to overwhelm with overtime. Both the Netherlands and Sweden have only 0.001 per cent of their populations working over 50 hours a week on a regular basis.
In Denmark, 78 per cent of mothers go back to work when their children head off to school.
The top ten countries with the best work-life balance:
1. Denmark 2. Norway 3. Netherlands 4. Finland 5. Belgium 6. Switzerland 7. Sweden 8. Germany 9. Portugal 10. France
