Cassandra Melish explores Denmark's employee-first work culture through examples like priests getting Christmas Eve off and a SAS flight cancelled because too many pilots took vacation at once. Danish full-time workers get over five weeks of vacation, employer-funded accounts, pensions, and free fruit, treated as rights rather than perks.
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Hi, and welcome to the How to Live in Denmark podcast. I'm Cassandra Melish. I had a nice holiday here in Denmark. I went. I went to church on Christmas Eve, which is a hallowed tradition for Danes. Going to church on Christmas Eve is often the only time they go to church all year. So I got there together with a family friend, and the church was packed. Really, there weren't enough seats. People were forcing their way in and fighting for the best spots. There was an old lady with a cane that kept getting pushed out of the way. She almost fell over. We ended up with a seat near the back, and my family friend knew someone from the church who stopped by to say hi. And I, being a foreigner, said something along the lines of, this service is so popular, you should probably add some more services on Christmas Eve next year. The lady from the church just smiled and shook her head. That wouldn't be fair to the priests, she said. The priests also need to spend time with their families on Christmas. Now, I support priests spending time with their families. That's a good thing. But couldn't they spend time with their families on the 364 days a year when Danish people don't go to church and then slip in a couple extra services on Christmas? It's kind of their Super Bowl, their World Cup championship. It's their big day. But this is part of a wider culture in Denmark. that the needs of the employee are often more important than the needs of the customer. This is changing a bit. When I first came to Denmark, for example, all the shop clerks would take lunch breaks at exactly noon, which, of course, was when all the customers were on their lunch breaks and wanted to come buy things. You'd go to the stores and there would be no clerks. They were All eating lunch? That's less true now. They've learned to stagger their breaks. But Danes still demand a lot of their employers. A full-time employee in Denmark gets more than 5 weeks vacation a year, 6 if you count the Danish public holidays. Employers also contribute to a vacation fund so you can enjoy your holiday. If you get a job at a big Danish company, You'll have a pension and probably life insurance, and big companies will even pay for private healthcare so you don't have to wait in line for the public health service. The employer usually offers a lunch plan so you can get tasty food at a low cost without leaving the office, and a fruit plan so every employee gets a couple of healthy snacks a day. Now, these are seen as rights, not benefits. There was a front-page piece in the newspaper Politiken last week about temporary employees, and some were not allowed to be part of the Enjoy Your Vacation fund and, and were not allowed to be part of the fruit plan. This was seen as really outrageous. Now let me put this into context. Danes are excellent workers. In fact, they're some of the most efficient workers in the world. They work very short hours, but they work hard. You rarely meet somebody incompetent in Denmark. But there are a large number of people who act as if the job is there to serve them instead of them serving the job. There was a famous case a few years ago. During the peak vacation season, July, the airline SAS had to cancel a large number of flights. This is because too many SAS pilots had taken vacation during the vacation season. Now, SAS promised this would never happen again, and to my knowledge, it hasn't. But as I sat in my seat on an SAS plane this holiday season, waiting to be flown someplace sunny and warm, it was announced that the plane could not take off. There was a mechanical problem, and it being the vacation season, all the mechanics had the day off. And that's the How to Live in Denmark podcast for this week. Please go to our Xander Mellish Facebook page, tell us what you think of the Work Ethic in Denmark. Or tweet us at How to Live in DK. 2 is a number. This week's episode is sponsored by 4Sound. If you're looking for sound equipment in Copenhagen, they're the best ones around. Good customer service too. Music arranged by George Garvis. See you next week. Remember, the How to Live in Denmark book is available for download on amazon.com. You can read it on any phone or tablet. All you need is the Kindle app, and the Kindle app is free. The book's not free, but it's not very expensive either. If you read the book and enjoy it, please leave a review on your local version of amazon.com. It helps other people find the book and find the podcast.
