According to the last 2015 Eurofund report – European Working Conditions Survey, data show that the types of work organization vary significantly across European countries.  This study, that is held every 5 years (the next one is going to be available in 2021), measures and analyses 8 different aspects concerning workplace organization and the satisfaction level of employees.

The 8 different analyzed aspects are:

• The physical environment

The working conditions seem to be satisfactory for the Greeks as they are not exposed to loud noise, dust, or body’s strain.

• The work insensitivity

In the question “Does your job require that you hide your feelings?” Greeks seem to be the most repressed comparing to all the other European nationalities employees.

• The working time

According to the European survey, only a small percent of Greeks need to work during the night to reach their deadlines and a slightly bigger percentage work more than 10 hours daily.

• The social environment

Greek employees usually do not feel supported by their managers.

• The skills, the discretion, and other cognitive factors;

Concerning the acquisition of new and useful skills, Greeks are at the top of the list of the citizens who claim that they do not learn new things while working. Moreover, compared to the other countries, Greeks seem to be able to apply less their own ideas. Finally, they are at the top of the list of people not being trained in the framework of their job.

• The prospects

In the statement “My job offers good prospects of career advancement” only 33% of people agreed in comparison with the 50 percent of Malta and Denmark and other European countries. It’s worthy to mention that only 37% of people under 35 agreed in comparison with 67% of Maltese people.

• The Job and company context

According to this part of the questions, it is claimed that still in the company’s environment there are more male than feminine workers and 75% of the manager/ boss positions are “masculine”.

• Working life perspectives

Finally, a significant percent of Greeks believe that they have the sufficient skills needed for their job when at the same time almost the same percentage believes that there’s need further training to meet their jobs’ needs.

The European Working Conditions Survey of 2015 is available here where you can compare the data with the ones of the other European countries.

In the framework of workplace innovation and satisfaction in IED, we implement the H2020 project “INNovaSouth”. The aim of the INNovaSouth project is to provide dedicated SME instruments able to stimulate Southern European SMEs to implement new organizational models for the management of human resources and innovative solutions for the modernization of the workplace.

The overarching purpose is to bring to the Southern European market an expanded vision of the new factors of competitiveness through an innovative model of best practices of non-technological innovation, allowing Greek and Italian SMEs to find simple, immediate and innovative solutions to increase employee’s motivation and productivity.