Legal diversity of working time appears to be

one of the most critical issues for European

HR managers. Good or bad news? According

to renowned experts, most of the answers

will be found well beyond statistics: within

companies… and households!

working time

E U R O P E A T W O R K

An ADP publication

chris Brewster

Professor of international Hr Management, university of reading and school of

Leadership, change and Hr Management (Henley). Director of Henley’s

Hr centre of excellence

"i’m not at all sure we can trust the statistics"

Page 6

Lionel Prud’homme

eMea Human resources Vice-President at carlson Wagonlit travel

"go out into the field and behave like workplace

ethnologists!"Page 4

gerhard Bosch

Professor of sociology and Director of the institute

for Work and skills at the university of Duisburg-essen

"Working time distribution at the household level is

a key factor"Page 2

A ViSion on

facts and figures

p. 8-9

Temps de travail annuel contractuel

Jours fériés

Jours de congés

Congé annuel

Jours

Heures

# 2JANUARY 08

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europe at work: You say that observing couples gives a better idea of local working time practices across europe than reading european directives. are you being serious? Gerhard Bosch: Let’s take three couples. The first in Oslo, the second in London and the third in Madrid. We’ll ask them all the same question: who should be the breadwinner? “Both spouses equally”, the Scandinavians reply. “Both spouses”, the Brits also reply. But the husband will earn more than his wife. The difference between the sexes becomes more pronounced south of the Pyrenees and the Alps, where the wife traditionally stays at home.

How much does economic development contribute to working time practices?The economic factor is decisive, but it interacts with institutions and culture. In Portugal, for instance, economic constraints resulting from the colonial wars of the 1970s pushed women into the workforce. The fact that women’s pay is lower in Great Britain is another reason why husbands work more than their wives.

can social policies reverse the trends?They play a decisive role. There are far more women working full-time in France and Belgium than in Germany because they can put their children in nursery schools and crèches – full-time. Many German women

stay at home, and many who choose to work give up on the idea of having children; this is undoubtedly one reason why Germany’s birth rate is falling.

Local working time legislation still differs widely in spite of european directives. How do we make heads or tails of it all?By looking at three factors:

working time, room given to part-time work and flexibility. These three factors combine in a number of different ways across Europe. When you look at how things are done from north to south and from west to east, you find as many models as there are points on the compass, plus an intermediate model represented by Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The Scandinavian model, which I think is the most interesting, encourages full-time work for everyone and distributes the work between men and women.

Working hours are reasonable and employees are rarely forced to do overtime and go home late. But full-time work can be adapted to suit individual circumstances. When there are children – or elderly parents – to be taken care of, workers go part-time or even stop working for as long as needed. This

Gerhard Bosch Working time distribution at the household level is a key factor Gerhard Bosch, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Work and Skills at the University of Duisburg-Essen, focuses on households and the distribution of working time between men and women and asks whether we are moving from the male breadwinner model to a more egalitarian two part-time jobs model.

WOrKiNg tiMe

““I don’t think we will harmonise social practices by decree

Gerhard Bosch, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Work and Skills at the University of Duisburg-Essen

3

practice is becoming more and more common among men as well as women.The southern model is the opposite. Being the family’s sole breadwinner, the husband will often do small undeclared jobs on top of his already long official working hours. If his wife also works, she will often do likewise. There is little room for part-time work in the south; even less room for flexibility.

Between these two extremes, the continental model seems to be faced with contradictions. The working week is short and people retire early, but what seems to have been forgotten is services for families, in Germany in particular. As for flexibility… it’s harder to reduce one’s hours and go back to full-time work later in Düsseldorf and Lyons than in Copenhagen and Oslo! Whereas the Scandinavians have opted for flexibility throughout their lives, the “continentals” have gambled on work-sharing of weekly hours and ended up with the highest unemployment rates in Europe!

What should we make of the British and irish models in this context?These two countries are much more open to women working than the southern countries. But men’s salaries are higher and a third of men earn even more by doing overtime, working up to 48 or 49 hours per week. In this system, part-time work of women is the corollary of overtime of men.Lastly, of course, there are the eastern countries that recently joined the EU. This “transition” model comprises both a long working week and early retirement, which was widespread following the collapse of the communist system. But from the communist period this model has retained

the equal sharing of full-time work between men and women, high flexibility and extensive childcare facilities. In spite of their economic tribulations, these transition countries are currently closest to the Scandinavian model.

all these models have their limits. each of the categories you describe allows exceptions… Of course. These models constitute frameworks that must not overshadow other specific factors. Childcare facilities and school hours vary extremely widely between France and Germany, for example. Even though these two countries have enough in common to belong to the same model, their inhabitants have different mentalities. We saw this in a recent study of women working part-time in superstores. This study, conducted in Great Britain, Germany and France, revealed a French exception: the controversial notion of only being allowed to work part-time is purely French. Another example is Portugal, where the southern cultural models predominate and yet work is shared between men and women, just like in Finland!

social europe has been set in motion. Will Brussels’ directives and regulations succeed in harmonising our working time practices? I don’t think we will harmonise social practices by decree. This will happen slowly as people’s mentalities and outlooks on life gradually converge and as institutions like childcare develop. The male full-time/female part-time combination is a transitional form between the single male breadwinner model and more egalitarian modes. And the two full-time jobs model could evolve towards one in which both spouses have part-time jobs.

gerhard Bosch is Professor of sociology and since 2007, is also Director of the institute for Work and skills at the university of Duisburg-essen. He is specialized in labour market policy, working time, employment policy and training. He has written many books, articles and is often invited to radio broadcasts. gerhard Bosch is currently working on dynamics of national employment models as well as european comparison of "low-skill" jobs.

some of his publications…

g. Bosch: "european employment models under pressure to change", 28th conference of the international Working Party on Labour Market segmentation iWPLMs / Lest, university of Marseilles, aix-en-Provence, france , 04.07.2007

g. Bosch, "Working time and the standard employment relationship" in Decent working time: new trends, new issues, J.-Y. Boulin, M. Lallement, J.-c. Messenger, f. Michon, (eds.), geneva: internat. Labour Office, p. 41-64, 2006

g. Bosch, H. Bielenski, a. Wagner, "Working time preferences in sixteen european countries", europ. foundation for the improvement of Living and Working conditions, Dublin, 2002

g. Bosch, s. Lehndorff, "Working-time reduction and employment: experiences in europe and economic policy recommendations" in Cambridge journal of economics 25, p. 209-243, 2001

g. Bosch, "Working time: from redistribution to modernization" in Changing labour markets in Europe: the role of institutions and policies, P. auer (ed.), 2001, p. 55-115

>>

eXPert

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Could it be that statutory working hours are more important in an ideological debate than in HRMs’

everyday experience? When Lionel Prud’homme, EMEA HR VP at Carlson Wagonlit Travel, decides to build a productivity model, he aligns the ten countries in which his 11,000 European employees work on a “single grid”, a median Full Time Equivalent, that makes differences vanish. So the question is no longer whether people work longer in the UK, France or Germany, but how many transactions staff members complete in a given time. “You simply need to travel abroad to see that national practices do not necessarily follow the letter of the law ”, notes the expert. “There are obvious signs, in business districts and on the street, which contradict the official figures. We see in particular that French executives work longer hours than most of their European counterparts.”

So the business model of the company is built by measuring everyone using the same yardstick. The main aim is for the service sector to catch up with industry in terms of value analysis. And to do so Lionel Prud’homme had no hesitation in making use of a powerful tool, HR Intelligence, extracting HR data from payroll systems.

But the analysis is economic rather than managerial. Certainly, CWT will be able to compare productivity in different countries and see whether an Italian signs more contracts per hour than a Spaniard or a Latvian. CWT will be able to set up its new “business centres” in the most favourable regions, because its activity is increasingly scattered and decentralised. It will even be able to rank the performance of these centres, which employ 30 to 200 people in small teams of five or six providing services to clients. But what measures can be based on these data with regard to management? “Everything except technocratic measures”, explains Lionel Prud’homme, who understands that statistics cannot be corrected by issuing decrees. “The key to corporate success lies in reaching the best compromise between targeting profits and caring for the staff.”

Like workplace ethnologistsLionel Prud’homme’s advice to CWT’s local HRDs is to “go out into the field and behave like workplace ethnologists ”. Team efficiency on a daily basis stems more from arrangements between individuals than from following rules to the letter. The mainly female workforce is not unfamiliar with this adaptable, inventive, empirical approach, which is more conducive to finding solutions than creating conflicts and productive rather than complicated. “I have observed different types of people”, notes our ethnologist HR VP. “Women who arrive at 8 o’clock, women who arrive at 8:30, and so on until 10 o’clock. These habits stem

Working hours at Carlson Wagonlit Travel

The advantage of small-scale arrangementsWhen the wage bill represents the main cost component, do statutory working hours significantly affect profit centre productivity? With agencies in 22 European countries and nearly 1,034 "business centres" staffed by 30 to 200 people, Carlson Wagonlit Travel is analysing its business model. "Performance is not driven by national legislation, claims Lionel Prud’homme, EMEA HR VP, "but rather by best management practices.

Lionel Prud’homme, EMEA Human Resources Vice-President at Carlson Wagonlit Travel

WOrKiNg tiMe

“ “Local managers act as mediators in the name of corporate values

5

Working hours at Carlson Wagonlit Travel

The advantage of small-scale arrangementsWhen the wage bill represents the main cost component, do statutory working hours significantly affect profit centre productivity? With agencies in 22 European countries and nearly 1,034 "business centres" staffed by 30 to 200 people, Carlson Wagonlit Travel is analysing its business model. "Performance is not driven by national legislation, claims Lionel Prud’homme, EMEA HR VP, "but rather by best management practices.

Lionel Prud’homme, EMEA Human Resources Vice-President at Carlson Wagonlit Travel

from both the age of their children and the sequential nature of our processes. The women who arrive later take over from the others.”

Is this freedom to make small arrangements self-regulating, without any risk of affecting productivity or fairness? Of course not! Local managers keep a watchful eye on a number of general limits and act as mediators in the name of corporate values. The vital issue of part-time working falls within this limited margin for manoeuvre. “For example, it would be impossible to conduct our business if nobody worked on Wednesdays.” The rule is binding for everyone and guarantees equality for all. But requests are handled on a case-by-case basis, with always the intension of seeking solutions to difficult situations. “Our role as HRM is to mediate unstintingly,” stresses Lionel Prud’homme. “By doing so, we are able to show the managers what we expect of them, and strike the right balance between our duty to sustain our economic performance and fulfil our social role.”

annualised hours and no time clock?An issue of much more general importance to everyone, annualised hours, will provide a subject for discussion between social partners. The business travel market obviously goes through slack periods and busy periods. So why not vary working hours accordingly over the year? Obviously the first obstacle is childcare, which is more developed in some countries than in others (see interview with Gerhard Bosch page 2), and families are rarely able to find a flexible solution. “If I have to, I’ll set up a legal advice hotline to accompany the annualisation of nannies’ working hours!” suggests Lionel Prud’homme. He fully meant his suggestion, but it wasn’t taken seriously…

Second obstacle, the trade unions doubt the company’s ability to clock time fairly, hence the surprising recommendation from some PrACtiCeS

Carlson Wagonlit Travel

with over 40 million on and offline transactions annually, Carlson wagonlit travel is the second largest travel manage-ment company in the world and is number one in europe, the Asia-Pacific region and Latin America. Cwt is specialized in business travel management and employs more than 22,000 people in almost 150 countries. in 2007, Cwt wholly-owned operations and joint ventures generated USD20.5 billion in annual sales.

of them that time clocks should be reintroduced. “Worst of all ”, objects the HR VP, picking up on Chris Brewster’s idea without quoting it (see interview page 6). “With time clocks your value-added no longer matters; all that’s counted is your hours.” Simpler and based more on trust, declarative solutions seem to be better...

Hence, in the privacy of each company, away from the debates and statistics, working hours are the result of a certain way of doing business together. And what the workplace ethnologist discovers at Carlson Wagonlit Travel is a culture of travel and the universally accepted rule that a client must never be left stuck at an airport. Of course, HR Intelligence will soon help defining productivity standards. But the HRM will examine managers’ profiles rather than national legislation to explain differences between two business platforms.

“ “Local managers act as mediators in the name of corporate values

WOrKiNg tiMe

europe at work: the aDP Hr atlas shows wide differences in local working times across europe. are they reflected in productivity?Chris Brewster: I am not at all sure we can trust the evidence that we’ve got. For example, most European studies show that the British working time is longer than anywhere else in Europe.

But anybody who has already worked in Southern Europe could have observed that people work extremely long hours, very late into the evening. OK, they may take quite long lunch breaks, but often those breaks are spent with colleagues, discussing work issues anyway. In all sorts of organisations in all sorts of

countries, people generally are in the office a lot longer than they think they are. I think probably what you’ve got is a much more accurate recording of time in the north of Europe, and a rather more casual recording of time in the south of Europe, which tends to emphasize the one and underplay the other.

Do the less productive countries work less?Absolutely not! The countries that work longer hours are the less productive countries. So, in a sense, they are making up for lower productivity per hour by just doing more hours. That applies, incidentally, to the United States as well. The

Chris Brewster Working time and productivity: beyond the figures!After having conducted extensive international HRM research, worked closely with many organisations in all sectors, and published some twenty books and over a hundred articles, Chris Brewster now takes time to stand back. Looking beyond the figures and studies, he shares his realistic vision on working time with us.

evidence is that the United States is not a highly productive country on a per hour basis, but because they work longer hours than we do in Europe, they make up for that.

are corporate cultures more influential than local ones? HR managers manage the people within their company, and far away from the national averages! As well as the national culture, there is an organisational culture overlay here. For example, in Sweden people are very mature about their working hours arrangements; if they have promised to be home at

6 o’clock, then they make sure they are home at 6 o’clock. But even in Sweden, there are organisations where people work extremely long hours. Thus, HR Managers have to understand the national culture but be much more aware of their immediate organisational culture.

““Countries that do longer hours are less productive

Chris Brewster,Professor of International Human Resource Management and Director of Henley’s HR Centre of Excellence

6

What is best for a company: long hours with low productivity or…From a managerial point of view, in many ways it’s actually cheaper to get people to work long hours than to invest in new technologies. But more or less the same amount of work gets done in each organisation! A few years ago, one of my doctoral students did a research project on productivity, with matched groups of organisations as different as engineering companies and police forces. Some of these organisations were working more efficiently for a shorter number of hours, whereas others were working less efficiently, but for longer hours. And we saw very similar things in France, incidentally, when the 35-hour week was introduced there.

Part-time work is a good way to decrease working time. is it also a good way to increase productivity?Employees like it, but employers also like it. We know there is now some fairly serious research that says part-time workers tend to be more productive. If you’re only in the office for four hours a day, you spend less time having coffee and talking to your friends and it’s much easier to concentrate and get on with your work. That’s particularly the case where jobs are repetitive. So with part-time work, you get people who are at their fast early pace.

is it always useful to check the working time? Productivity and working time can be unrelated. You have to differentiate between organisations and, within organisations, you have to differentiate between tasks. There will be some tasks for which working time is extremely important. If you’re

chris Brewster is Professor of international Human resource Management at the university of reading and at the school of Leadership, change and Hr Management of Henley (uK) and Director of Henley’s Hr centre of excellence. He has conducted numerous research projects in the field of international and comparative HrM. He also founded and is a special advisor to the international and ongoing cranet, conducting researches now in over 40 countries.

chris Brewster published some twenty books and over a hundred articles. currently, he is notably undertaking work on convergence of Hr practices across countries.

some of his publications…c. Brewster and O. tregaskis, "converging or diverging? a comparative analysis of trends in contingent employment practice in europe over a decade", Journal of International Business Studies 37, (forthcoming)

c. Brewster, "comparative HrM: european views and perspectives", International Journal of Human Resource Management, 18:5, May 2007, p. 769-787

c. Brewster, P. sparrow and g. Vernon, International Human Resource Management, 2nd edition, 2007, London, uK, chartered institute of Personal Development, p. 230

c. Brewster, "a european perspective on HrM", European Journal of International Management, Volume 1, Number 3, 2007, p. 239-259

>>serving customers in a shop, productivity is less of an issue than just making sure a shop opens at the right time. But it does not really matter when people do the work if they are manufacturing something or creating an advertising campaign. The people at the receiving end really don’t care when you did it.

From a Human Resource Management point of view, the difficulty there is to make each of those people feel that they are being treated in a fair and equitable manner. So, when I go into companies, what I find is rules on working time being applied to people for whom working hours are actually much less important than productivity and what they produce. Nobody gains very much from that process. For these people, it is seen as a kind of dictatorial imposition on their freedom to come and go and get the job done as they wish. And, particularly for some of the people. the issue is: “Are we being paid for the number of customers we can get in or are we paid just to turn up and sit here? ”

What is the main issue today for european Hr Managers?Most HRMs want to standardise everything around the world because they don’t want to be running everything on a kind of free-for-all basis, where everybody is reinventing the wheel every time. But they now also have to be sensitive to local legislations, local cultures, and local business requirements. In all sorts of areas of International Human Resource Management that’s a key issue for working time management in particular.

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eXPert

FR1,535

DE1,435

LU1,557

BE1,534

NL1,367

DK1,551

NO1,360

SE1,587

FI1,666

UK1,672

IE1,638

AT1,636

ES1,775

IT1,791

HU1,994

SK1,791

CZ2,200

PL1,994

GR2,053

PT1,685

Actual working time: average annual hours worked per person

Annual hours worked per person

Source: OECD 2006 – Annual hours per person 2004, 2005 (11)

No country in the range 1,800 - 1,900

< 1,500 hrs

1,500 - 1,600

1,600 - 1,700

1,700 - 1,800

1,900 - 2,000

> 2,000 hrs

Not available

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facts & figures

Did you know?

• 2005 annual working time in:

United States: 1,809 hours

Japan: 1,802 hours

Canada: 1,737 hours.

• The maximum weekly working time (including overtime) of 48 hours, as set by the EU, is the basic rule in many countries – such as Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway and the UK.

Heures

Actual working time: usual hours worked per week, full time

Source: European Communities Eurostat 2006 – Usual hours per week 2005 (2)

Temps de travail annuel contractuel

Jours fériés

Jours de congés

Congé annuel

Jours

Heures

Source: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions 2006 – Collectively agreed working time 2005 (17)

Collectively agreed working time: days off and annual hours

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facts & figures

®

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