My STEP Signature Project in Frankfurt, Germany focused on providing consulting services to ECO Group, a conglomerate of companies focused on providing sustainable personal care solutions to all. Within this, we were asked to help ECO Group with their expansion into the U.S. market since there is a ton of opportunity. This entailed conducting research and creating a plan for one company in the portfolio, Ben&Anna, to make the transition into a new market smooth and simple.
In America, there is a ton of value placed on work as it is seen as the centerfold of our lives by many. This is a concept I’ve struggled with because I truly value everything outside of my work life so much and have grown to be extremely thankful for the freedom I have as a student. Being overseas in Germany I witnessed a lack of emphasis on work and more on well-being. People do not live every hour of their lives worrying about the next big thing at work and rather are always lax to the point where it sometimes feels like everyone isn’t even working. I had always heard of people saying in America we live to work but in Europe, they work to live. Overall, I gained a greater appreciation for another way to live life while feeling a greater understanding behind American work culture.
As it pertains to this transformation, I have been a huge people watcher ever since I was younger. The small details I noticed truly emphasized the massive difference in cultures. To start, people normally take their time as for example, people would go grab an hour-long lunch break in the middle of the day to just enjoy themselves. This is extremely abnormal in America as we tend to take 30-minute breaks or just eat while working. While they take this time to eat people will even enjoy alcohol to loosen up and just let the time pass. There is such an emphasis on maximizing your work value, but with work unions as well there is so much job security overseas where it isn’t a huge worry for people.
Adding on to the part about loosening up, when working at the start-up, people weren’t ever stressing heavily about the next big item. Granted there are times when everything picked up, but it never felt like there was an urgent situation at hand that would lead to a huge problem. When I worked in corporate America at a large tech. consulting firm, there was always a sense of urgency to the point where if the work was not done well, it would be awful for my performance along with my team. This leads to people treating everything differently with pushing long days, etc, whereas people in Germany were done at 5 and always go to enjoy something rather than going home to work.
Lastly, when talking to people these differences were recognized again. There were countless people I talked to around Europe sharing how their first thought was never their work. I feel as though I’ve seen and talked to plenty of seasoned workers in America providing context to how late they work, how they are always stressed, and how it doesn’t slow down. The European people I talked to were always comfortable with what they had and didn’t feel as though they needed a ton to live a good life. Because of this, jobs were never daunting to them and they shared there’s no extensive need to climb the corporate ladder. This creates an astronomically different environment in your day-to-day life.
As someone who places a ton of value on having a good enough work-life balance to do the bare minimum, seeing Europeans live so freely reemphasized my want to make sure I sacrifice when I’m younger to be able to spend the proper time where needed. In the U.S. I recognize we will not live as carefree as they do, but there can be steps taken to make sure you can have it all in your life, just at different times. It truly showed me to not shy away from my beliefs and stick to my want to eventually have the flexibility to be as carefree as they are sooner than later.