Are the French bonkers?

When I read today that under a new agreement with unions and employers' federations, employees in consulting and digital fields in France must stop taking work related calls and emails before 9am and after 6pm, I start to think, possibly.  Add to this their 35 hour work week, put in place in the 1990's, and you really do start to wonder about our neighbours the other side of the Channel; however, what I'm actually beginning to wonder is whether they've got it right?

Despite all these concessions to work life, the French are actually far more productive than the Brits according to OECD figures and maybe their firmly held conviction that life is not all about work and one must also enjoy a little bit of joie de vivre is the right one. One of my oldest friends is a director of a large French public company and he tells me that when the French are at work they really focus and go for it. So there it is, maybe if you know your work time is more limited you don't talk about the footy, or the weather, or office gossip - perhaps you just simply get on with it. Indeed in Gothenburg in Sweden they are experimenting with exactly this concept - they have cut the work day down to six hours for city workers, in the expectation they will be more productive during this shorter work day.

I remember a German friend of mine who is an engineer in a large Munich based company saying to me, "Why is it when we have a meeting with international teams from around the world, the English want to spend so much time in the meeting making the idle chit-chat". Personally I like a bit of idle chit-chat but he probably has a point."

Which brings me on to an old colleague of mine, Julian Stubbs, who has just written a great new book, 'E-ployment: Living and working in the Cloud'. It paints a picture of the world beyond traditional employment, enabled by the cloud, digital tools and a hybrid of remote working and one in which it's possible to achieve that elusive work/life balance. Now you may say that sounds like a load of old gobbledygook but the difference with Julian Stubbs is that he walks the talk and has created the world's first cloud based advertising agency called, UP. So if you're struggling with your work/life balance (who isn't apart from the French) and looking for a different way of structuring the way you work, read this book.

Last weekend I was sitting outside a wonderful café in Paris, enjoying the Spring sunshine and drinking a delicious glass of Provencal Rosé whilst waiting for my Coq au Vin to arrive. It was at that moment, I concluded that if anyone is bonkers, it's the Brits!