The Netherlands already has a very high percentage of temporary and part-time employees. There is a trend towards more flexible systems of working time in order to make more effective use of employee resources. The Gezin is an important part of life for Dutch people, thus in order to achieve a good work-life balance, this needs to be taken into account.ĭutch companies are well aware of the business case for a work-life balance. The Netherlands in Perspective: The Organizations of Society and Environment Springer 1988). It is quite normal to congratulate a Dutch colleague for the birthday of one of their family, for instance their father, wife or child” (Shetter, w.Z.
Birthdays of family and friends are carefully kept track of. In the Netherlands one of the central rituals is the birthday. “The values most important to a society are given expression in its primary rituals. However, this is changing a bit as the upper class more and more resemble a US lifestyle. This particular domestic model of social contentment and fulfilment is captured in the word gezelligheid”. The whole Dutch conversational style, in fact, derives from the family emphasis: Dutch families and their visitors are able to carry on for hours a conversation among six to ten people in a circle without once breaking up into individual pair-conversations (the dominant pattern in the U.S., for instance). Living rooms usually have chairs arranged in a tight circle to make conversation maximally easy and intimate. Interiors are normally designed following a custom emphasizing the family circle grouped together. Dwellings, whether assembled into large apartment blocks or in rows, are intended only for the gezin and their typically modest size does not permit much expansion of this. Housing patterns in the Netherlands, including the customary layout of individual houses, accurately reflect the perception of gezin as a family unit as fundamental. The wider sense of a network of relationships is Familie, but the unit of mother-father-children most commonly occupying a single-family dwelling is gezin. There are in fact, two words in Dutch for “family”. Nevertheless, it remains in essence what is sometimes called an ‘introverted family culture’. “Statistical surveys in all Western countries suggest the same disruption and dissolution of traditional family ties and the rejection of old family values, and the Netherlands has not been exempted from this. As the author of The Netherlands in Perspective, William Z. The Dutch make friendships slowly and selectively but, once made, these are generally for life. The Netherlands was named the third best country for work-life balance in a 2011 report from the OECD.
The Dutch generally work to rule, that is to say that they have clearly defined working hours and they respect them.
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