Member-only story
The general attitude you encounter in most U.S. workplaces is that people dislike their job, aren’t that engaged, don’t love their managers, don’t feel respected, think their manager doesn’t understand motivation — and yet are always busy and don’t have time for vacation. In short, a lot of U.S. people tend to dislike their jobs but tolerate them. (This isn’t all people. Some people love their jobs, some people don’t even work, and some people hate their jobs and leave them.)
It doesn’t have to be this way, though. In other countries/regions of the world, people enjoy work much more — or at least slightly more — and there’s even a word that puts a lot of this into context: Arbejdsglæde.
Arbejdsglæde is a Danish word. It combines “Arbejde,” meaning work, and “glæde,” meaning happiness. It literally means “happiness at work.” Danish thus has a word for that. English does not.
I’m personally a huge fan of Scandinavia, but I also understand it’s a much different place than the U.S. For example, the populations there tend to be very homogenous; the U.S. is very different than that. So directly comparing them is a fool’s errand. But still, the Danish — and other Scandinavian cultures — do a lot of positive things around work, detailed here. Among the notable aspects:
- Flexible work days (I’ve written this about too). The standard U.S. work schedule…
