(source: http://www.newsinenglish.no/2015/02/12/laziness-behind-fall-in-productivity/)
Too many Norwegians just want
to have fun and head for their holiday homes, frets the boss of an
international accounting firm’s operations in Norway who’s Norwegian himself.
He went public Thursday with his irritation over fellow executives and
employees alike who spend too much time at their “hytter” and not enough time
in the office.
“The weekend traffic starts on
Thursday. Mobile phones are turned off after work. If you work long days,
(there’s a fear) you’ll burn out. Is it a surprise that productivity is
sinking?” Trond-Morten Lindberg wrote in a commentary published in newspaper Dagens
Næringsliv (DN) on, appropriately enough, Thursday. Lindberg, at the end of
a week when a government commission unveiled its first
report on how productivity needs to start rising again in Norway, vented
his personal observations of what he clearly sees as an alarming trend in
Norway that threatens business and the economy in general.
“It’s not low oil prices that
pose the greatest threat to the Norwegian economy,” wrote Lindberg, managing
director accounting firm BDO in Norway. Instead, he claims, there’s a “national
attitude problem” that results in lower productivity. “I think it’s dangerous
for Norwegian business and Norwegian competitiveness that we have become
lazier,” Lindberg told DN in remarks that embellished his published commentary.
Free time becoming more
important than work time
Lindberg noted how productivity
has “slowly but surely sunk” since 2005. The decline began, coincidentally or
not, about the time oil prices jumped and the Norwegian economy entered an
extremely robust period. Lindberg suggests that Norwegians have since become so
affluent that they’ve become accustomed to “the good life,” which includes long
weekends at fancy “hytter” (in the mountains during the winter and by the sea
in the summer, with many families owning both) or trips abroad. He suggests
that Norwegians also spend too much time working out at athletic clubs or in
the great outdoors, and notes how it became so common for parents to take their
kids out of school for holidays that local governments had to forbid the
practice.
“We have had generations over
time who have done well, we have had a rock-solid economy where many have
earned well without necessarily having to roll up their sleeves and work a bit
extra,” Lindberg told DN. He said he’s “amazed” by the “people in my situation
(with a demanding job, a working spouse and children) who also manage to spend
15 to 20 hours a week exercising. Hats off to them if they also have time to do
everything else they must do, but I believe it’s at the expense of something
else. That can be their families or their productivity at work.”
He all but blasted his fellow
executives and workers in Norway for their alleged desire “to use all their
hytter, to exercise so much, to do everything other than what’s needed to make
Norway a more competitive and clever country than it is today.” Too many
Norwegians, he suggests, now take their well-paying jobs for granted: “If
Norwegian productivity is to increase, we need both an understanding of crisis
times and a fundamental change in attitudes.”
Facing swift reaction
Lindberg’s commentary seemed sure
to spark debate in a country with strong labour laws that regulate work hours
and conditions on behalf of workers. Norwegian worklife is also characterized
by generous paternal and professional leave, relatively high pay and a culture
that allows flexible hours and often puts “family first” over business. At the
same time Norwegian workers are often viewed as being highly efficient while
actually on the job, starting early and taking only short lunch breaks in order
to be out the door at 4pm. Lindberg attacked many aspects of Norwegian business
life that earlier have been envied from abroad and viewed as positive, not
negative.
Berit Svendsen, managing director
for Telenor in Norway, flatly rejected Lindberg’s claim that Norwegians turn
off their mobile phones after work hours. She could produce statistics showing
that mobile traffic is heavy all through the week, with at least as much
traffic on weekends as on weekdays. Studies by Telenor have also shown that one
out of three Norwegians work while commuting to and from their jobs, and that
one out of three bosses expect their employees to always answer their email
promptly.
“Norwegians are fond of their
hytter and we know that good mobile phone coverage makes it practical to also
work at their hytter,” Svendsen told DN. “I don’t think Norwegians work little
or are lazy. On the contrary, Norwegians are good at working extra, they are
good at using technology and they want flexibility.”
No longer tied to their desks
Kristin Skogen Lund, head of national
employers’ association NHO and the mother of four children, shares at least
some of Lindberg’s concerns. “We surely need to sharpen up and become even
better at our jobs,” Lund told DN. “Many need to contribute to this, NHO
included.” She doesn’t think there’s any unwillingness to work hard, but agrees
that Norway “has had good times” and that “doesn’t always contribute to
sharpening productivity. We need to make sure we don’t fall into a trap and
take things for granted, even though most of us are very well off.”
Lund stressed, though, that
spending more time at holiday homes isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “You need to
be careful about thinking that people don’t contribute just because they’re not
sitting behind a desk in the office,” she told DN. “More and more workers have
flexibility and can work anywhere.” A recent study showed that many parents
continue to work even when they need to stay home with sick children, for
example, and thereby aren’t shirking their jobs.
A top official at trade union
federation LO disagreed with Lindberg’s outlook on working culture in Norway.
“Lindberg has misunderstood some important points,” Hans-Christian Gabrielsen
of LO told DN. “Productivity has not declined, it’s just rising more slowly
than it was before. And productivity isn’t a result of working the most
possible hours. What’s most important is what we get out of every hour.”
Lindberg, who called on business
leaders to demand high productivity, maintains that it’s not a good sign that
it’s “steadily easier” to find parking places in town on Monday mornings
because many Norwegians are still at their hytter. The recent importance put on
“work-life balance” is self-contradictory, he wrote, “because it implies that
work is not a part of life. Jobs and careers are, and should be, an important
part of people’s lives. Less focus on work and more focus on free time results
in lower productivity. That’s simple accounting.”
newsinenglish.no/Nina
Berglund
