Hello and welcome back to the Easy English Podcast.
The best place to learn English through real world topics and discussions.
I'm oliver and, as always, we have another very interesting topic for you today, and that is why do people work so much?
It's a topic i was thinking about recently because in the UK and many cultures around the world, people work a lot.
They have quite long working hours during the week.
But I wondered to myself, is this the same all around the world?
What is it like in other countries?
Of course, work takes up a big part of our lives.
But have you ever wondered yourself, do people work this much everywhere?
Is it normal to work long hours?
Or is it something that we have just come to accept in our cultures, in our countries?
That's what we're going to look at, work culture all around the world.
And we're going to learn vocabulary to help you talk about jobs, work-life balance and even job related stress.
So stick around if you want to hear and learn these words today.
This episode is perfect for intermediate plus learners.
So anyone from A2 right up to C1 that wants to practice their listening and improve their vocabulary.
So grab a notebook or your Flipkart app on your phone and we are going to go first to look at today's vocabulary list.
As always, I'm going to explain some new words for you that I want you to learn today.
And I want you to listen for these words in today's podcast.
Can you do that for me?
Great.
Let's have a look at the list.
So I'm going to read this vocabulary list that I have made.
The first phrase that I want you to know, at least, and to learn many of you will know it already is work-life balance.
Work-life balance.
Work-life balance is the balance between the time that you spend working and the time that you spend doing things for yourself.
For example, many people struggle to maintain a healthy work life balance.
The second word for today is overtime.
Overtime.
So it means working extra hours beyond your usual schedule, beyond your normal schedule.
And an example here, she often works overtime, especially during the busy seasons in her job.
The third word this is a great one burnout.
Burnout and this is physical and emotional exhaustion, when you're tired physically and emotionally and it's caused by too much work or stress.
He took a break from work due to burnout.
I'm sure we've all been there once or twice.
The fourth phrase i want you to learn is nine to five job.
Nine to five job.
Often people will just say this like 9 to 5.
And this is a standard job, with regular working hours from 9 am to 5 pm or thereabout roughly that time.
So a 9 to 5 job isn't for everyone.
That's an example phrase.
Okay, the next phrase I want you to learn is productivity.
Productivity, this is a great word, and it means how much work someone can do in a certain amount of time.
So here's an example taking breaks.
Taking regular breaks can actually improve productivity.
The next phrase Annual leave.
Annual leave.
This is the time that you get off from work, usually paid holidays.
So we can say employees in France enjoy more annual leave than those in the US.
Isn't that amazing?
Per Americans, very small amount of annual leave.
And finally, the last word is workaholic.
Workaholic.
And this is a person who works too much.
He's a bit of a workaholic.
He even checks his emails on holiday.
Okay, so listen out for these words as we talk about work cultures in different countries, in different countries around the world.
And I will give you more context and probably even more words as we go through the podcast.
So keep listening.
First, before we start, we are going to potentially have a short ad break.
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You can check out the Patreon link in the description below.
Okay, let's get back into the episode.
And let's start with a very big question.
Why do we work so much?
In many countries, long working hours are seen as a sign of success.
Some people feel pressure to prove their worth through work.
We think we need good, big results from our job to show that we are worth something, that we mean something in society.
And others work long hours simply to survive, especially in countries where the wages are low or the cost of living is very high.
And as a result, we have to work much longer hours than we otherwise would.
Then there's hustle culture.
So hustle culture, I guess this is a new phrase too.
It's a lifestyle that promotes working hard all the time. often at the expense of rest.
So working lots with very little rest.
You need to work and earn more money and hustle.
Hustle culture is what we call it.
And this encourages people to work all the time, to start side businesses and to be productive every hour of the day.
And social media can really promote this idea of hustle culture, particularly around young men.
There's a lot of influencers, like Andrew Tate and other male influencers that are presenting this idea that you need to work all the time.
You need to work extremely hard.
And while I think that it's great to be productive and to work, we need to learn a balance.
Is it always healthy to be working all the time?
Not always, of course.
Too much work can lead to burnout, that stress caused by stress, that tiredness, the physical and mental tiredness of burnout.
And people might find then they have less time for family friends, personal hobbies and development.
It isn't all about work.
And that's why, of course, as we've talked about in other episodes, work-life balance is important.
And it's becoming a more important idea in recent years, with many companies promoting this idea of work-life balance.
But we're going to take a look at some different areas around the world and different approaches to hard working.
Recently, I talked about South Korea in relation to population problems with decreasing populations.
And they're a great example of a very hard working culture.
People often work very long hours and overtime is very common.
There's a strong focus on education and achievement, and that continues into adult life.
And as a result of that, there's very high competition within that system.
People compete to get better grades, to get into universities, to get better jobs.
And the competition leads to even more work.
The government has tried to reduce working hours, but many people still feel a social pressure to perform.
For example, a typical South Korean worker might stay at the office very late, even if they've finished their tasks, just because their boss is still there.
And this quite intense working culture has of course led to problems like burnout, low birth rates and a desire among some younger South Koreans to have more personal time.
We're only human after all.
But this does show us that work can be very linked to social pressure, which can come from our local culture.
And interestingly now in South Korea, there is a growing trend towards a better work life balance, especially among the younger generation.
Some companies have started offering flexible working hours or even allowing remote work to try and attract some of this younger talent.
And I think that's a great trend.
I hope it continues.
But with this illustration of South Korea, we're going to compare with some other countries around the world and show you that, in fact, how much we work is very much related to our country and to our local culture.
So we're going to jump to Europe, to France.
Now, I think France gets a little bit of a stereotype around work, maybe not working much.
And I don't think that's very true.
I think French people are very hardworking, and I think that France is a fairly productive country.
They have a big economy, they have lots of business and they're definitely a major economy and player in the world.
But the attitude amongst people and within the culture towards work is very different from South Korea or the US, for example.
French workers enjoy more rights than a lot of other countries, more workers rights.
So things that they are legally entitled to.
For example, they enjoy more annual leave than most countries, with the average of around five weeks of paid holiday per year.
And the 35 hour work week is standard in a lot of companies too, rather than 40 hours, which is quite common in the UK and often even more in the US, South Korea, Japan and other countries.
And this allows people to protect their personal time a lot more.
And they have personal protection, which is in the law.
It's from government.
They're protecting the rights of the workers.
And there's even a law in France which is called the right to disconnect.
If you remember this word, there was a word in a previous episode, disconnect.
And it means that employees are not expected to answer emails or phone calls outside of work hours.
It's legally protected under this law, which I think is amazing.
And this does not mean that French people are lazy.
It means they are more focused on work life balance and they respect their personal time, their free time, their family time and time for their own personal development outside of work.
And the results are really facts.
Productivity levels in France are still very high, even with fewer hours worked.
And they're still one of Europe's biggest economies, despite having these worker rights.
So it's something to definitely think about.
Do we need more worker rights and more laws to protect our personal time? and our work life balance.
So now we're going to look at Japan.
So Japan is a country I very much want to visit.
I think Japanese people are great and their culture and country seems so beautiful.
So in Japan the traditional work culture appears to me from reading about it to be quite intense, quite demanding, traditionally.
So people feel a very strong sense of duty, a strong sense of requirement to their company and they may stay in the office for very long hours.
And even taking annual leave in some companies can be frowned upon.
It can be looked upon negatively.
But things seem to be changing like most countries.
The Japanese government has been encouraging companies to reduce overtime and promote flexible working.
And younger workers appear to be pushing back against this intense working culture.
And I also think that's great.
I think we need a balance between the two.
So finally, we're going to talk about Sweden.
Sweden is a country which is often praised for its balanced lifestyle, its exceptional work-life balance.
I've visited Sweden.
I've been to Stockholm, traveled around a little bit.
I would love to go back and see so much more of that country.
Very beautiful country.
If you're from Sweden, I think your country is fantastic.
And I love Swedish meatballs, of course.
In Sweden, people usually work for around six to seven hours a day from what I've read online.
If this is true, let me know.
If it's not true, let me know.
Some companies have even experimented with a six-hour workday to improve productivity and reduce stress.
Wow, if that's true and companies start doing it in Sweden, maybe I should move to Sweden, because that sounds great.
There's a strong focus in Sweden on well-being and the culture supports things like taking regular breaks, spending time outdoors and maintaining and keeping that clear separation between between work and personal life.
Sweden shows us that shorter hours doesn't have to mean that you don't get your work done.
In fact, many Swedish workers are just as productive, if not more productive, than so many countries where they have longer working hours.
So I guess what can we learn from all of this?
Work culture appears to me to be shaped and created by a lot of things by tradition, by economics, by technology and even climate.
But as the world changes, so do our values.
More and more people have been asking, what is the cost of working too much?
What am I sacrificing?
And what actually matters in life?
In my opinion, if we just live to work, are we really living at all?
We need to find a balance and we need to find that perfect spot where we can enjoy our life and also be productive members of society.
Whether you're in a high pressure job or if you're looking for more balance, it's helpful to reflect on your own habits.
Are you a workaholic, for example?
Do you work too much?
Are you working long hours because you want to or because you have to?
And of course, there are positions and situations where we can't work less and we have to give all of our time.
And in that case we need to find ways to manage that stress and to better manage our free time as well, to compensate for that overwork.
And it's very, very hard.
I understand that.
So maybe it's time to focus not just on how much we work, but how we work. and how we also rest.
Looking to the future, there may be some interesting trends that can change how we work.
One of these could be technology.
It might be AI, for example.
As AI begins to do more of our jobs, it could give people more free time to get more productivity, more work done in a shorter period of time, allowing them to have shorter working weeks and shorter working hours.
Now, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me, but we will have to wait and see how the future pans out with regards to technology, with regards to AI and all these changes that have started to occur in our societies.
So first, before we finish today, I want to review some of the key vocabulary from today's episode.
So we have work-life balance, work-life balance, overtime burnout, nine to five job productivity, annual leave, workaholic and I think I mentioned hustle culture as well.
So think about how these words apply to your own situation.
Can you use them to describe your work habits or your country's work culture?
I would like you to try to use some of these words and write a comment.
So write me a comment.
If you're on Spotify, you can leave a comment.
And I want you to write about your work culture and try to use some of these new words.
If you're on YouTube, you can do the same too.
And if you're listening somewhere else, you can write it down yourself and just practice writing using these words.
So finally, what about you?
Are you happy with your work culture?
It's an important topic to think about and it's important to self-reflect and understand why we work the way we do.
So if you would like more in-depth topics like this, if you want more advanced, faster speech and topics, then you can check out the Patreon in the link below.
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Welcome to the Easy English Podcast.
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Thank you so much.
I hope you enjoyed today's episode and I will see you in the next episode of the Easy English Podcast.
Have a wonderful rest of your day.
Goodbye.
