What Makes Our French Work Culture Special
No, it’s not the 35-hour week
They say we French are lazy.
And why shouldn’t we be? Five weeks’ paid vacation a year, thirty-five hours a week! This sounds like a paradise for sluggards.
Don’t tell me that we should have chosen a sloth rather than a rooster as our emblem. As cute as sloths are, I’m fond of our rooster.
I do not deny my vacation days and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I am privileged.
But you know the saying. There is more to it than meets the eye.
Believe it or not, the pillar of our culture is not to avoid work at all costs.
The French work culture is based on hierarchy.
Maybe I should have added “too much”.
It starts upon hiring. You will get a better salary and a better position if you come from a prestigious French school.
I will take the example of engineering schools as I know them better. I attended one. My school was in the top five back then, so it’s not bad. And yes, I landed a good job afterwards.
How did I get into that engineering school? By attending a “classe préparatoire”, also known as “prépa”.
Those “prépas” for engineering schools are a French thing. The idea is to spend two or three years studying and sacrificing all social life. It’s intense and exhausting.
For three years, I studied almost every day until midnight, including Saturdays and Sundays. I lost more hair than ever and my periods were so painful because of the stress that I was paralyzed on my bed when they came.
I made all these efforts to be ready for the exams in the hope of getting a place at the engineering school of my dreams.
These exams are very hard. It’s like the Hunger Games, but with pens and papers. What’s more, the participants are supposed to be alive at the end.
So when someone survives and gets a place at one of France’s top engineering schools, they’re offered a great job at whatever company they’re targeting. Most of the time anyway.
All this to discover the paradoxes and myths of our work culture.
Let’s start with the best-known myth. No, we don’t work an average of thirty-five hours a week!
It’s true that our laws mention this working time.
Yet most people work more. Either they work overtime, or their contract defines a number of working days per year. The latter applies to “cadres”, like me. I’d say that I work between forty and forty-five hours a week. I know people who work more.
Now you get why our emblem is a rooster and not a sloth. We claim everywhere that we work less, only to work as much as most people in Western countries. Such big mouths.
Thus we spend most of our days in that place where we do our best to comply with so many untold rules.
We wear formal clothes. Casual pants are acceptable but shorts certainly aren’t.
We display honesty. When it’s yes, we say yes. When it’s no, we say no. We’re not committed enough to a positive attitude to bother with detours when it comes to stating a fact. Don’t expect to see ecstatic cheerleaders in the corridors of a French company.
We have endless meetings to plan new meetings to make the decisions we didn’t take at the previous meetings. You have to be French not to get mad.
And as many meetings as we attend, we end up following the chain of command. I’ve told you this before. Hierarchy is important.
But there is more to a working day.
I’m talking of the social part. Starting with the traditional morning coffee with colleagues.
We all gather to drink a cup of espresso and share thoughts and amusing anecdotes. Or even debate.
I guess that’s how we honor Descartes and Diderot. We are real chatterboxes.
We also chat over lunch. As you’d expect from French people, lunchtime is sacred. It’s even been forbidden for a long time to eat at our desk.
That’s why companies often offer a canteen where we can eat a good meal. That is the case of the company I work for. We have all sorts of dishes and desserts. At the end of the year, there is a Christmas lunch where we can eat foie gras and Yule log among other things.
So every day we meet for lunch and then we have another coffee. And we talk. Descartes and Diderot would be very proud of us.
This may seem ludicrous to you but this social aspect of French work culture is quite significant. That’s why I mention it.
Work can be alienating. No matter how many inspirational quotes you read, it’s not always fulfilling. But good relationships with colleagues can make all the difference.
France is known for its art de vivre, and work is no exception. Work-life balance is essential. It’s like an old belief stating that being happy requires nurturing different aspects of life, such as family, friendship, love or work. No aspect should grow to the detriment of others.
We work to live, not the other way around.
We are not supposed to return phone calls or emails once the day is done. We are also expected to take our vacations every year.
There are still times when phone calls are made after the day is over. In my experience, this is increasingly rare.
On the other hand, we always take our vacations. That’s why August is a dead month in France. Everyone enjoys a break.
It’s great and we are lucky.
And over time, this model could evolve even further. Following the retirement crisis, young people in France redefine their relationship with work. They don’t want to sacrifice everything to a system that may not reward them much.
The pandemic, the financial crisis and global warming shattered their certainties.
They aspire to a system where “always more” is not a mantra. They want meaning more than money.
Maybe in a few years, French work culture will take a new direction. Yet I am willing to bet that one thing will never change.
Morning coffee will always be with us!
Some links on the subjects I mentioned in this post:
What’s a French prépa: https://www.sieben.fr/2014/01/02/prepa/
Do the French work 35 hours a week: https://my-payroll-pro.com/resources/working-time-france/
Until covid, it was forbidden to eat at your desk in France: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/07/world/europe/france-desk-lunch-covid.html
Young French people are redefining their relationship with work: https://www.youngfabians.org.uk/how_the_french_youth_is_redefining_their_relationship_to_work
