Polish Work Culture

So it's almost two weeks since I've come to Wrocław and started working.

Since arriving I have slowly started to get into a routine and life seems to have gone back to “normal”. You see, my day looks like this, I get up to the sound of my alarm clock (the Avondale-branded-one that I brought with me from Australia), I get up get dressed and have breakfast and then walk to work. I work all day and then walk home for a relaxing night at home where I have the options of reading (currently reading Jane Austen's Northanger's Abbey in Polish), watching tv, going out or simply sleeping.

In a way I'm finding comfort in this somewhat-boring routine because although I'm in a totally different country and although most of the things that I come across on my day-to-day encounters are so different and so foreign, I still fall into my predictable patterns of behaviour that make me feel like in a way nothing has changed. But in fact a lot has changed...

Take 'work' for example. As my friend has wisely noticed, people in Australia “Work to Live” while people in Poland “Live to Work”. Life in Poland is centred around work—the lack of it and the striving to retain it. During the last few days I've had the chance to observe a number of people and their attitudes.

The fear of not having a job influences the attitudes that many people. Young people study hard to ensure that upon the completion of their studies they will be competitive in the workforce and that they will get a job. Yet many, once they finish tertiary education, struggle to find employment due to their lack of experience, lack of positions in the job market and the number of competitors for the same position. With unemployment rates of 20% in some areas, there is definitely no shortage of people who want to work.

Those that manage to find employment, once in their place of work, do everything to make sure that they don't lose their position and that they do not provide their employer with reasons for dismissal. This sometimes means compromise on working conditions as well as unrealistic commitments towards work.

For me this has been a bit of a struggle. I'm used to the hour-long breaks for lunch where my team and I would go out of the office to eat and get to know each other. As well as the 15minute coffee- and afternoon-tea breaks where we could drag our eyes away from the computer and just relax. So for me to have half-an-hour break during an eight-hour day where no-one goes anywhere and where everyone eats their lunch at their desk (not even tearing themselves away from their work) is a bit of a change.

I also found that people's attitude towards “personal” as opposed to “work” time is also very strict. In Australia, I found management and employees to be more understanding when it comes to having to make a personal call or send a personal email. Here, in my opinion, people don't engage in any activity of a personal nature during work time for the fear that they may be reprimanded for it, which could ultimately affect their employment. And employers of course, wanting to get the most out of their employees, make sure that people do not take more than their legal share of “personal time”.

In a way I can see how firms may think that this is more beneficial to them, afterall they are getting their fair-share of “work time” out of the employees. But my question is, “Are they really getting their time?” Studies show that people need to take regular breaks for their brain to work at the best capacity, otherwise people become less efficient. Also, for me, social interactions at work are a motivating factor which encourages me to work for the benefit of fellow employees and the organisation.

Just last week, a friend from work shared a story with me which typifies the task-orientated mature of workplaces in Polish workforce. Every day a lady working for a government agency would pull-out a pile of paper notes which she had to write up on the computer. She had a certain number of notes to do during the day. If she happened to get through them too quickly, she would simply delete the work and start again so that when the boss came to give her another task she could honestly say that she didn't finish her current task. You see, I believe that if this lady had something to motivate her (other than money), she would have been able to do twice as much, but when there are no incentives, what's the use of trying harder than you have to.

But then there is also the fact that over the many year where this has been happening, Polish people have come to know this type of work environment as normal and typical and can no longer comprehend or feel comfortable in any other work environment.

As I was talking to a friend at work about the amount of paper-work that our local people have to fill out, I mentioned that it is easier for people to get used to less paper-work than try to teach them to follow new controls and rules. Yet I was surprised when my friend said “In Poland it doesn't work that way. People thrive in beaurocracy. They don't know how to live without it, and in the absence of it they create their own. I find it interesting how the work culture first enforced by the autorities has now transcended that it no longer needs to be enforced but has become intrinsic to the work culture.

Anyways, I'm sorry if I have bored you with my reflections. As I read through them I figured that I could probably submit this as an essay for an “Occupational Behaviour” subject. LOL. Sorry. I just find this quite interesting. At uni they told us that we should never stop learning...I guess they have managed to indoctrinate me with that theory. LOL.

I'm hoping to write some more later on this week as well as to put up some photos of Wrocław town square. It is truly beautiful.