The Burrow
Mar 6, 2024
With work making up such a significant part of our days and weeks, if we don’t enjoy it, then it can have a detrimental impact on our quality of life.
In 2022, we uncovered the best countries for work-life balance; and with working from home an option for most, we thought it was time to run the data again – especially with remote working arguably making it more difficult to separate your personal life from your professional one.
That being said, some countries are putting rules together to help combat this, with Australia’s government passing a bill through the House of Representatives that allows workers to ignore calls from bosses out of business hours, without getting penalised for it.1
It’s clear that a bad work-life balance can negatively affect your health, and as health insurance experts we wanted to see which countries strike the best happy medium between work and a personal life.
We analysed factors including the number of hours worked on average over a year, as well as the amount of paid holiday and sick leave, and more, to find out.
Does your country make the cut? These are officially the countries that offer the best work-life balance in the world.
Spain tops the list as the best country in the world for work-life balance, for several reasons. Not only does it have the joint top number of paid annual leave days, at 30; but it has six plus weeks of paid sick leave, alongside 16 weeks of maternity and 12 weeks of paternity leave paid with 100% compensation.
In second place is Luxembourg, also offering six plus weeks of paid sick leave, alongside 100% of maternity and paternity paid leave. However, the difference in time between the two is quite vast, with mums enjoying 20 weeks of paid leave, while dads only get two.
To top it off, Luxembourg scores highly for happiness with a rating of 7.23 – the eighth highest on our list.
Our highest ranking country that didn’t make it into the top 10 in 2022 is France, with workers enjoying 30 days of paid holiday a year, in addition to six plus weeks of paid sick leave (something which 35 countries on our list in total offer).
France also covers the vast majority of paid maternity and paternity leave, at 95.7% and 96% of wages respectively.
The Netherlands makes it into fourth place, with the country working on average, the fourth lowest number of hours over a year, at 1,427. 100% of paternity leave is paid (although it’s only one week), with 99% of a 16-week maternity leave covered. Additionally, the country has the joint fourth highest happiness score, at an impressive 7.40.
Rounding off our top five is Finland, with 30 days of paid annual leave, as well as six plus weeks of paid sick leave. The country also has the highest happiness score of 7.80, suggesting that the population feel they have the right split of work and life.
Whilst the Nordic countries dominated our top 10 list in 2022, Finland was the only country to make an appearance this year. However, all 10 countries remain in Europe, with Bulgaria, Estonia, Slovenia, Lithuania, and Austria making up the top 10.
In fact, the highest placing non-European country is Chile, in position 22, followed by Colombia and Mexico in 30th and 31st place. Australia comes in at position 33, with Canada in 37 and the USA at the bottom of our list, in position 40; with no paid annual leave, sick leave, maternity or paternity pay at the national level (rules differ between states and employers across America).
When we carried out our first work-life balance study in 2022, whilst the top 10 list is largely the same, there have been movements. Spain climbed six places over the last two years to make it into first place; with Luxembourg dropping down to position two.
France, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Lithuania all made it into the top 10 list, replacing Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and Germany – with Germany dropping 15 places from 10th to 25th.
Looking at this purely from the number of paid weeks off, when it comes to maternal leave, you can’t beat Bulgaria – the only country in the world to offer more than a year off, at 58 weeks.
Greece comes in second place, at 43 weeks of paid leave, followed by the UK at 39 weeks.
The topic of paternity leave is often up for discussion, and whilst some countries are much more lenient in allowing dads to take paid leave, there’s still a huge gap between maternity and paternity leave.
Spain currently leads the way at 12 weeks of paid leave for new dads, with Portugal offering five weeks; and Austria, Slovenia, and Lithuania all offering four weeks.
With many companies offering four-day weeks with longer hours worked Monday-Thursday, or Friday lunchtime finishes; the length of a working day can contribute massively to work-life balance.
On average, Germans work the least hours, at around 1,340.9 hours a year, followed by Denmark at 1,371.6 hours and Norway at 1,424.6. With Scandinavia often hailed as the place that strikes some of the best work-life balance, this probably comes as no surprise.
In contrast, workers tend to work more in South and Central America, with Colombians working more than 1,000 extra hours a year than their German counterparts, at a staggering 2,405.4 hours a year!
Mexicans aren’t far behind, at an average of 2,226.3 hours, with Chile making up the top three at around 1,962.8 hours over the course of a year.
With the maximum weekly hours advised at 40,2 continuous work weeks that are longer than that can result in burnout due to workers feeling more stressed and tired, as well as not having time to take part in leisure activities such as going to the gym and socialising with friends and family.
One of the best ways to ensure you keep a healthy work-life balance is to set boundaries for both yourself and your coworkers. Here are just a few suggestions of things you can do to help keep your personal and professional worlds separate.
If you find you have too much work on, and you’re having to work late to fit everything in, then the first thing you should do is delegate your tasks. If you’re a manager, while it can be hard relinquishing control for the first time, just remember you hired your employees for a reason, and passing them work will mean they’ll develop their skills in the longer term.
Alternatively, if you’re a junior, then have a chat with your manager and let them know you have too much work on, and they’ll be able to help advise who best to pass your tasks out to.
So, it’s getting towards the end of the year, and you’ve still got two weeks off to take, but no plans to do anything… make sure you take it off anyway. A lot of companies won’t let you carry holidays over, so don’t lose it – after all, it’s there for you to relax and recharge; and a week off work can do wonders for resetting your mind and enabling you to come back to work feeling energised.
With working from home commonplace, it can be hard to switch off and find a better work-life balance. Creating clear boundaries will help you separate the two – e.g. turning your laptop off at 5.30pm, or not having access to work emails on your phone.
If you find that you’re getting contacted outside of work hours on a regular basis, then have a chat with your manager. After all, they’ll want to know, as if it’s not addressed, it could lead to you burning out.
Steven Spicer, Executive General Manager of Health at Compare the Market Australia, states that it is important to try and find a good work-life balance in your life.
“There are significant health impacts from a lack of balance between work and personal life. This can include stress and anxiety disorders, weight loss or weight gain and fatigue. It’s important to be able to have down time that you enjoy,” Mr Spicer explains.
“You may have busy periods in your job, and if you find you’re regularly working late or are feeling stressed and anxious, then it’s time to take a step back and speak to your manager.”
Mr Spicer notes that there are a number of benefits to private health insurance that can help with work-life balance and lifestyle that people might not know about.
“There are a range of benefits in an extras cover policy that could help with easing stress, such as gym memberships and fitness classes when recommended by a medical professional, as well as therapy and counselling. Also, a benefit of having private health insurance with hospital cover is that you can avoid the public wait lists. This could help you get inpatient treatment for various medial concerns sooner to focus on being healthy and getting back to a better quality of life in a shorter amount of time.”
This dataset ranks 40 countries, based on how good they are for work-life balance. To do this, 8 different factors were used. Once the data for the factors was collected, the factors were then normalised, to provide each factor with a score of between 0 and 1. If data was not available, a score of 0 was given. The normalised values were then summed, to give each location a total score out of 8. The locations were then ranked from highest to lowest, based on their total scores.
The factors used are as follows:
The factors were indexed as follows:
All data is correct as of 29/01/24. The ranking data shown is a compilation of multiple data sources and may not be representative of real life. All data is accurate with regards to the sources provided.
Sources:
Hours worked – https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm
Paid annual & sick leave – https://www.worldpolicycenter.org/data-tables/policy/is-paid-annual-leave-available-to-workers
Paid parental leave & leave rates – https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/maternity-leave-by-country
Happiness score – https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2023/world-happiness-trust-and-social-connections-in-times-of-crisis/#ranking-of-happiness-2020-2022
References: