Europe leads the world in work-life balance

The Dutch were the best Artists and craftmen and I bet it's because of the windmills that Holland has the best live-work conditions in the world. The Dutch know how to work and relax at the same time. While Canadians just drink beer until they're stupid.

Having recently moved to N. America, I was horrified to discover that I could only have 2 weeks paid vacation time on a 40 hour + working week. I thought slavery had been banned 200 years ago. Compared to Europe the work/life balance is skewed towards work not life. I used to enjoy 6 weeks vacation time a year, not excessive I feel, but it does give you time to recharge your batteries, & visit some other interesting places, what can you do in 2 weeks apart from fall apart on a beach somewhere to try to recover your energy & spend quality time with your kids/parents/husband/wife, but I have even seen vacationers with their laptops hooked into the office on the beach.

I'm moving to Denmark

North American countries will never be at the top of this list!! Europeans don't live to work, like we do in Canada and the US. They don't NEED all the things that we NEED; they know the difference between NEED and WANT. The things they need are a roof over their head, food to eat, education for their children, and time to spend with their families. Lunch hour is a valuable time to meet friends and take life's nourishment. Socializing is far more important than meeting in someone's house to watch TV (except, of course, soccer). Big cities in Europe are most like the north american life style, but even they have a different blend of work/play. We have become a continent of overstuffed, overworked, greedy people who have to have the things that will demonstrate that they are "successful". In the time I lived in the French countryside, not once was I asked what I did for a living. It just wasn't important. We have a lot of things to change before we have the relative serenity and pleasure we had fifty years ago. We threw out all the good to make way for the 'new'.

Unfortunately in North America, people work until they drop dead at the office. A co worker passed away after working for 36 years for this company ( I cant mention here) and only a brief email from the owners was sent to the staff. I now realize that there is more that just work.
I work the normal hours and I refused to take on a blackberry. I understand if you have a blackberry chances are you are working 70hrs/week? who wants this? really

Enjoy the day as it if is the last day today.

I have worked for a corporation in Toronto for 60-80 hours/week, at least 3 weeks/month and being paid 40 hours/week. This crazy schedule lasted for 5 years. I have left the company and started on my own. Life working at that corporation left me so disgusted by the politics of the big corporations, with so little chances of a resonable pay or time off, that I have learned how to make money on my own. At present, I work for myself 7 days/week. I have learned how to become independent of others and this was the end of the agony. Working on my own now gives me a lot of time off, although sometimes I work as hard as I want, but for my business all in getting residual income from my own rented properties. It is paying off already. After a year on my own, I look much younger and I am much healthier than I was before and a lot happier than before.

Nobody has ever expressed a regret on their deathbed saying "geez, I really should have spent more time at the office..."

Yes Sonja, you are right.
Compared to Europe, Canada is terrible regarding holidays. In Europe, they have between 4 and 6 weeks every year. If you change the company they take in consideration you previos number of working years and you don't go back to number of days for holidays as a beginner. I started with 2 weeks (f -#&*@$$) of holidays in a bank in Canada, needed ten years to reach 3 weeks and when I wanted to change the bank they offered me 2 weeks of holiday at the new job. What quality of life do you have with 2 weeks per year?

I always find it interesting how occupations always like to quote a "work/family life balance" when really that is just an appeasing illusion. The reality of it is when there are say 16-17 hours in a day that your not sleeping and you spend 9-10 either working or commuting to and from... your only left w/ 6-7 hours (5 of which if your lucky enough is daylight), If you have young children... good luck if you get 3-4 hours with them per day. So really... where is the balance... especially now that alot of business and people work weekends. Remember when it was illegal to work on Sunday's.

I don't credit or discredit either political mindset for the way we live. What I do think, as a person born and raised in Canada, yet who was very exposed to the European way of life, is that as Canadians, we are quick to judge the rest of the world as being inferior. For example we are subtly trained to believe that the US education system is ions behind ours when in fact they're pretty much the same, we are trained to believe that our health care is better than everyone elses when in fact our system has become an embarrassment in the last 10-20 years, and the examples go on. The reality is that people in most parts of western Europe enjoy life, they work to live. Could you imagine Canada closing up shop for the entire month of August? It would be a disaster, yet Europe does so every year. In fact in Canada, we are behind in many other things such as technology, affordability of technology and cost of living in general is too high, public transit sucks, etc., etc. And you can rant all you want on this comment, but it's the truth. I love Canada, but we have shifted the wrong way in the last 10-20 years.

I worked in Europe and Canada. Work ethics is much more humane in Europe, women with children are huuugely supported, maternity leaves are not problematic, moms can take time off to catch up time with their kids. Canada has a lot to learn....believe me.

Would be interesting to see some statistic about vacation time per year. It should be significant factor in this work-life balance study.

working or fishing... tough choice

Work-Life balance US ranks 23. I worry that I see Canada trying so hard to copy the US in so many things. I live in the US for 40 years, believe me that the LAST place we want to be like. Worked there since I was 18, went back to work after my kids within 6 weeks always, never got paid a dime to help with mat leave, had to use my leave days, never took a holiday other than a long weekend and no one I worked with did anything different. It sucks! I'm so glad to be back in Canada!

For years I`ve felt our society was geared more to the wishes of the corporations/tax loving government than it was to the actual well being of society as a whole. My grandfather made a telling statement when visiting me in here in a burb of Vancouver, being a farmer from the North Battleford area he always bragged about how hard they work back on the farm, 2 weeks after being here he came to the conclusion that farm life back on the prarie is a vacation compared the pace of my working life.

While ever productivity is measured by the number of hours racked up by an employee you know things are not right. Its not how many hours you work its what you accomplish while at work hello! No end of studies have proved that working long hours for extended periods of time is not productive it actually makes you less productive. Allowing employees to have longer rest periods means your workers are more charged up and productive.

we need to try to be more like Denmark instead of trying to emulate the U.S.!!

I saw recently that Danes are the happiest people too. Why are people so scared of socialism?

I had to work 10 years in Canada to earn 4 weeks holiday. I moved to UK and started off with 4 weeks .

We're a country that work for a living, we based our life around our work places. That's a culture impose to us mostly by the western corporate world. Europe in the other hand most precisely mediterranean cultures seem to gravitate away from their work places and build their life around family and friends, lots of social activities, and sleep. just as an example, if you work for the goverment in france you only work 35 hours a week, and they are probably more efficient than our fellow federal employees here in town. But then again its just me.