‘Happy?’ I ask, wrapped up in a totally impractical cerise cocoon coat on my doorstep, trying to keep the dog from making a break for freedom into the snowy wilds of Sticksville-on-Sea. My refuse man looks at me quite rightly as though I am a lunatic, then nods and tries to make his escape.
‘Happy? Out of ten?’ I hold fingers up.
At this point, the postwoman arrives on her scooter and offers to translate. Feeling more than a little foolish, I explain that I’m trying to ask my refuse collector how happy he is out of ten.
‘Ok-ay…’ she also looks at me as though I’m deranged, then says something very fast to the bin man. They look at each other for a few seconds, then do the Danish equivalent of the winding-your-finger-around-one-side-of-your-head to denote that you think someone’s mental.
‘Otte?’ Bin Man finally replies.
‘Eight!’ I yelp, before the postwoman has a chance to translate. ‘That means eight, right?’ I look to her for approval and feel pleased that I am now capable of counting to ten (or rather, eight) in Danish. Postwoman nods, pulls another ‘this woman is batshit crazy’ face, and then zooms off on her bike.
Buoyed up by my ‘research’, I start seeing evidence all around me. I meet a yoga teacher for a feature in Aarhus, our nearest Big City, and canvas her opinion. Ida is a fresh-faced, healthy, tanned, toned Viking. If this is what yoga does to you then I want in, I think. I tell her about my happiness project and she says she thinks Danes do have a good work-life balance on the whole. ‘And if we don’t, we usually do something about it. You ask yourself, “are you happy where you are?” If the answer’s “yes” then you stay. If it’s “no”, you leave. We recognise that how you choose to spend the majority of your time is important. For me, it’s the simple life – spending more time in nature and with family. If you work too hard, you get stressed, then you get sick, and then you can’t work at all.’ She tells me that she used to work as a political spin doctor in Copenhagen until she found she was getting so stressed that her hair started falling out. ‘I had big chunks missing, I felt tired all the time, and then I fell off my bike quite badly one day on top of it all and thought, “this is crazy, I need to make changes”.’
Ida quit her job the very next week and began training as a yoga teacher. Because the welfare state offers a safety net, Danes can change career relatively easily. After a five-week ‘quarantine period’ following a resignation, you’re entitled to all the same benefits as someone who’s been made redundant – 80–90 per cent of your salary for up to two years. The Danish labour market has a ‘flexicurity’ model – a flexible yet secure labour market that means it’s easier to make someone redundant, but that workers are protected and looked after until they find something else they like, and it’s all financed by tax revenue. According to statistics, 25 per cent of the Danish workforce gets a new job every year and 40 per cent of unemployed workers find new jobs within the first three months. Denmark also spends more on lifelong training than any other country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s group of 34 developed countries (the OECD), with the government, unions, and companies paying employees to attend training and pick up new skills. This helps workers stay up to speed in a changing job market. And since moving jobs has no effect on pension entitlements or earned holiday time, there are no barriers to changing employer in Denmark. You can hop around and still accrue the same benefits and number of days off. The system seems to be working, with the current unemployment rate at just 5 per cent. With around two-thirds of Danes belonging to a trade union, there’s also muscle on hand to fight for the preservation of workers’ rights and privileges should anything go wrong – so it’s very much power to the people.
‘It means that in Denmark, we all have a choice,’ says Ida. Now she works how she wants and when she wants to in a candlelit haven of a yoga studio. ‘I’d say I’m an eight out of ten in terms of happiness these days. It would be a ten but I still haven’t met the love of my life – though I’m hopeful! Right now, I’m so grateful for the changes I’ve made. I feel like I’m really living.’ She makes it all sound so simple. Not easy, but simple: life wasn’t feeling right so she made changes and now, things are good. I’m not sure I’ve ever made any major decisions without a hefty kick up the arse. But then, I’ve never lived Danishly before.
I start to wonder whether Danes are just braver, or more confident in their own decisions. Martin Bjergegaard thinks so. A businessman and entrepreneur, Martin is Denmark’s poster boy for happy working practices since his book, Winning Without Losing, was published in 2013. He had a stressful spell working for an American company for fifteen months until, he says, he couldn’t sleep any more. ‘I don’t know if you’ve ever tried not sleeping, but when you do it for too long, things go downhill pretty fast. By the end of night number three wide awake, I just thought, “I need to make a change”. I had to stop being in a work environment that was making me unwell. The day I quit, I slept like a baby and I’ve felt amazing ever since.’ Martin is also a runner, travel fanatic and father to seven-year-old Mynte. Tall, tanned and youthful-looking for his 38 years, Martin insists that each day should be ‘fantastic’ and ensures that he always spends a part of it recharging his batteries, playing sports and having fun. Oh, and he rates his own happiness out of ten at ‘a pure ten’.
‘Denmark is really at the forefront of this movement towards more happiness at work,’ Martin tells me, once he’s woken from his power nap one drizzly Wednesday afternoon. ‘I think this is down to equality and our great security system. It’s really hard to be happy if you feel insecure, but Danes know that even if they lose their jobs, they’re not going to end up on the streets. They’ll be looked after. And this means they work more efficiently and are less stressed and happier in their jobs. In the US, no one has any support. Everyone is on their own. And yes, they have the chance to make it big without such high taxes, but they also have to look after themselves. If anything happens and you don’t have insurance, then you’re…’ he searches for the right word and finds it. ‘…you’re fucked. But in Denmark, we have this “work-life balance” thing pretty well sorted.’
The symbiosis between work and play in Denmark appears to have come about by accident. After the Second World War, industry overtook agriculture as the primary employer and growing cities needed more workers. The government advertised overseas for workers to join the Danish labour market and for the first time, women from all backgrounds were given a shot at the nine-to-five (or ‘eight-to-four’ in Denmark). The Danish workforce increased by a million between 1960 and 1990 – and women accounted for 850,000 of these, I find out from Denmark’s Centre for Gender, Equality and Ethnicity, KVINFO. During this period, it became acceptable for married, middle-class women to work, whereas previously only the unmarried or hard-up had taken paid employment. With women in the workplace, parenting solutions became a priority. Working hours, childcare and maternity leave were standardised and the idea of balancing work and leisure time became entrenched. Now, it’s just something that Danes have come to expect. People leave early on a Friday because they want to spend time with their family. Parents get a day off work, fully paid, to stay at home with their children if they get sick. As a result of these practices, Denmark comes top of the pile for work-life balance according to the OECD, closely followed by the Netherlands, Norway and Belgium. The UK and the USA limp in at 22nd and 28th place respectively.
The official working week in Denmark is 37 hours, already one of the shortest in Europe. But calculations from Statistic Denmark suggest that Danes actually work an average of just 34 hours a week. Employees are entitled to five weeks’ paid holiday a year, as well as thirteen days off for public holidays. This means that Danes actually only work an average of 18.5 days a month. This blows some newcomers’ minds so much that a few American expats on secondment insist on working from 8am to 6pm every day so it’s not too much of a shock when they go home.
Danes may spend ridicu
lously few hours in their place of work, but they’re enjoying the time that they do put in. A study by Ramboll Management and Analyse Denmark showed that 57 per cent would carry on working even if they won the lottery and could afford not to work for the rest of their lives, and research from Denmark’s Aalborg University showed that 70 per cent of Danes ‘agreed or strongly agreed’ with the statement that they would prefer paid employment even if they didn’t need the money. Danish workers are the most satisfied in the EU, according to a recent European Commission survey, and Denmark also comes top in terms of worker motivation, according to The World Competitiveness Yearbook. The latest Eurobarometer survey found that Denmark has the happiest workforce in the EU and another study from Randstand.com showed Danish employees to be the happiest in the world. Oh, and workers are 12 per cent more productive when they’re in a positive state of mind, according to research from the University of Warwick. In fact, Denmark ranked third in the OECD’s study into worker productivity. They may not be working long hours, but they’re getting the job done. The country also came ninth on the UN’s global innovation barometer and the World Bank named Denmark as the easiest place in Europe to do business. It’s lucky Danes don’t like to brag.
But it’s not all smørrebrød and sing-songs in the Nordic workplace. Despite all the obvious advantages to being an employee in Denmark, workplace stress – as Ida discovered – is becoming more common.
The Department of Occupational Medicine at Herning University Hospital ran a study suggesting that one in ten Danish employees considered themselves to be frequently stressed. Their findings were supported by research from the Danish National Institute of Social Research, the National Institute of Public Health and the National Research Centre for the Working Environment. But individual trade unions report more alarming results, with the Confederation of Salaried Employees and Civil Servants in Denmark, the Danish Association of Lawyers and Economists and the Financial Services Union putting the proportion of their members suffering from stress at 30 per cent.
I’m surprised to learn that the country with the best work-life balance in the world also has a stress problem. But just as there are no definitive statistics on how many Danes are signed off with stress, there’s little consensus about why workers are suffering. Danish workplace happiness expert Alexander Kjerulf of woohooinc.com believes that the increased prevalence of smartphones, laptops and remote working may be to blame.
‘It’s becoming more common to have to check messages in the evenings,’ says Alexander, ‘which isn’t good, as you never relax and recharge.’ This is backed up by some unions, with the Danish Association of Lawyers and Economists even reporting that 50 per cent of its members work when they’re supposed to be off on holiday.
The landscape of big business in Denmark has also changed. Over the past two decades, there’s been a 500 per cent increase in highly skilled foreign workers arriving in Denmark, according to the Danish Immigration Service. Because so-called ‘educated immigrants’ pay high taxes and arrive in the peak of their working life and health, they place little burden on the welfare state and contribute handsomely to the country’s coffers. This increases the feeling of competition in the workplace for native Danes – something that can send stress levels soaring, according to some of the Danes I speak to. It feels strange to be on the receiving end of a ‘bloody foreigners, coming over here, stealing our jobs’ cliché, but in this instance I can’t deny that we have. And it’s making many native Danes anxious.
Danes also have high expectations of working life. ‘We know our jobs are secure and that there’s a safety net,’ one woman who works in middle management for a major Danish company tells me on the sly, ‘so if I’m not happy at work, I think, “what’s my boss going to do about it?” We realise we have it pretty good, compared to the rest of Europe. But if we’re not having it great? Well, then we think something’s wrong. I know several people who’ve been signed off for stress because of this.’ In keeping with the idea of arbejdsglæde, most Danes want to enjoy themselves at work. To many, a job isn’t just a way to get paid; they expect far more. And this can make them demanding employees. At Lego, a spy tells me, there was a recent mutiny when the toymaker changed their coffee supplier.
‘The internal message boards went nuts,’ my secret agent says. ‘The guy who makes the coffee decisions got trolled. People went mad! There’s a culture of entitlement because we’ve had it so good for so long now. If we don’t get everything we hope for from work, people can get depressed – or at least think they’re depressed.’
Another theory is that because stress has been on the agenda in recent years, Danes get asked about it more often and so are inclined to think, ‘actually yes, I am stressed’. Researchers from Denmark’s National Research Centre for the Working Environment recently expressed concern that the preoccupation with stress might be leading survey respondents to report being stressed even though they weren’t, with some Danes going on stress leave as a ‘preventative’ measure.
Workplace happiness tsar Alexander has another hypothesis: ‘I don’t think there’s really more stress in Denmark than in other countries, it’s just we take care of people better here,’ he says. Local municipalities can fund absences of up to a year before suggesting reduced working hours and offering job counselling for Danes diagnosed with stress. ‘Whereas in the US or the UK you’d be expected to soldier on, in Denmark your employer and your doctor will listen if you say you’re stressed – and they’ll do what they can to help.’
‘So, are you saying Danes are a bit soft?’ I suggest.
‘We’re caring,’ Alexander corrects me. ‘We get people well again, and then they’re really productive.’
This is beginning to sound plausible. Denmark is still coming top of the list for happiness, worker motivation, work-life balance and productivity. OK, so things aren’t perfect, but I’m pretty sure there are still lessons to be learnt from work-life balance, Danish-style.
After another hard day at the coalface of happiness research, I pour myself a medicinal glass of wine at 6pm and think about whether there’s a way I can apply the principles of Danish work-life balance to my own laptop-tied existence. I’ve given up a good position to come here and freelance – something most Jutlanders can’t get their head around, with numerous people asking me when I plan to get a ‘proper job’. Instead of being known by my name here, I am referred to as ‘Lego Man’s wife’. My work feels like the only thing that still defines me as ‘me’, rather than as a small yellow minifigure with a click-on ponytail. My work has always been my identity. So the idea of doing less of it is terrifying.
I get the whole money-can’t-buy-you-happiness thing. Having chosen a career as a journalist, I know all about picking a career that sounds interesting but will in no way bring you wealth/yachts/a champagne lifestyle (unless it’s on a press trip). I understand that success and happiness should be measured by something other than money. That you can work and work to build up your bank balance and then end up spending it all to outsource your life, buying back your sanity and bribing yourself to keep on going. Over a certain basic threshold, it’s simple life maths: Fewer new shiny things = fewer hours overtime = happier life.
So why do I find it so hard to say no to work? Even when I’m too busy to eat/breathe/wee? I was like this when I was a staffer too, but now it’s worse. The curse of the freelancer is never knowing where your next pay cheque is coming from or when they might stop – so it seems foolish to take my foot off the pedal and stop working evenings, weekends, and those bleak, lonely hours in the middle of the night when you wake up stressed and steeled to tackle a deadline. But then, that’s part of the reason we’re here. Doctors in the UK warned us that an out-of-whack work-life balance was probably one of the reasons I haven’t been able to get pregnant. Having spent the last two years bloated on hormones and acting as a virtual pincushion for various different types of fertility treatment, I’d promised to try and relax a little more out her
e. To take a break from worrying about baby-making and from working quite so hard, if I can.
‘If you work too hard, you get stressed, then you get sick, and then you can’t work at all,’ Viking goddess Ida’s words come back to me as I take another slug of wine (did I mention the ‘on a break’ part? No judging). By glass number two, I’m feeling bullish. Fuelled by bravado and Beaujolais, I move the cursor of my laptop to the silhouetted apple symbol on the top left-hand corner of the screen. I’m going Danish, I think. No more being a slave to my inbox all night. It’s 6.25pm Danish time. That’s only 5.25pm UK time. A whole 35 minutes before the commissioning editors in the offices of the newspapers and magazines I write for will even think about logging off. A whole 2,100 seconds of email communication or last-minute additions or deadlines or commissions I might miss until morning. And that’s assuming that the London folk are clocking off on time. Which is unlikely. Feeling a rush of something resembling adrenaline mixed with bile, I hover the cursor over ‘Shut Down’ and click. There is silence. The whirring sound I’d assumed was just part of the general hum of my new, all-mod-cons Scandi house, dies down. LED lights dim to nothingness. And the world does not end.
The Year of Living Danishly Page 7
