I am commanded by the doctor, and my husband to bed rest for a week....using this time to catch up on the blog. Thought to write a little about my personal observations about the American work life versus the one in Finland. Like it would make my sick leave feel less...away from work :)
Last year I brought my project with me from Finland. I was pretty much on an one woman assignment, working for client projects based in US and Mexico but for a company, whose headquarters is in Finland. I had been working in few occasions for them and knew the company well. Thus I had rather soft landing. They knew me, I knew them and I was allowed to focus on managing the projects.
After that experience it was time for something new and time to get a taste of how it feels to be part of a bigger team. It rarely happens in the US that you find a project locally, at the time when you are looking for one. This time I got lucky though and managed to join a local project. It has been a learning experience. I hardly knew anyone, even from my team colleagues. The few ones I kind of knew, was virtually. I have learned a lot since, both from my own company and the client's. Yet I have also the feeling that due to my colorful background and having done projects in so many countries, I can contribute knowledge which is a rare trade here.
The business has been booming here so well the past years that most of my colleagues have been working only in the US. Also, the size of the population makes one's career take a totally different path than what my career experiences were in Finland. In US you can afford to specialize in a certain area. In Finland we never had that luxury; there, if you just show an open mind and willingness, you end up being thrown in into all kinds of fun stuff. Everything from your "normal work" to selling, negotiating and writing contracts or even jumping in as the client account partner. Lot of this happened of course also because I had a manager, who knew she could throw me into any challenge and I would be able to turn it around. Whether it was troubled project , impossible deal or difficult client.
Here one tends to limit the activities only to the "normal work" border lines and it is very tightly defined at which level you get to do what. Suddenly I am the same seniority level as before but the scale of my work activities has narrowed down greatly. The only way to get to do the things, which I have already done, is to get level higher.
I still remember when I asked my mentor if he thought that I could have a chance to build a career in our company but in US...he laughed. The reason he laughed was that he knew already what I have now learned. Senior resource, which was fostered and matured in Europe will be of good value here.
The diversity of skills and experience, which I or any of my European peers have versus the same level of our US colleagues; there is a difference. Lessons learned from that, a European resource with wide skill set and international experiences should never hesitate checking the possibilities in US.
I have had the luxury, within my current employer, to have a great manager when I needed one. I would say it becomes more important the further one goes, as one has matured professionally and created a solid set of work ethics and values. Having a manager who fits within that framework has big impact to the motivation level. I got lucky here in US, my manager is from UK. He understands how it feels first to dive into the US work life and learn to find your way.
I have also been lucky to have a few great mentors, some who know me from years ago and some from the time I have been in US. All of their support has been important. I am trying to pay it forward and have been mentoring for some years now. Now I have few mentees in US too. I am enjoying that relationship a lot!
But it did feel funny in the beginning....you stay at the same company, basic processes stay the same but the scale of everything changed. Suddenly instead of having overall company size of 1500 people...alone one practice area had 2000 people. Not to mention the overall size of the company here in US! The amount of things we do as a company has only become clear during the time here. Finland was too far and too small to get concrete grip of some of the ground breaking and trend setting activities that we do. I felt like I was, after 9 years with the company, suddenly a beginner. Learning so much new each day.
Some things, which are dear to me changed, not necessarily to better. I valued highly being a manager, whom my team knew well and whom they knew to trust with anything. I had the same relationship with my own manager in Finland. It was coaching relationship on top of managing.
Here developing such relationship takes lot longer, as everything is virtual. I have been working with my current manager for over a year now and have not seen him in person, not even once. It took me some time to warm up to the virtual working environment. Eventually I got there. Personally I think that it would have been easier journey if one would have had chances to meet in person.
In Finland we got excellent work life balance and employees are well protected to allow to have that balance. In US it depends a lot on the company you work for. My company is from the better end but even then work weeks are longer and everything is more about work.
It does not mean to say that one would necessarily work more quantitively (accomplishments) but the amount of hours spent working is higher to start with. The border line between work time and out of office time is more vague. Even some of my mentees, who are at the beginning of their career, shared with me that they feel the need to check e-mails on Sunday. After some lessons learned along the way I am not willing to go down that path anymore.
In some ways it is a bittersweet feeling, as by this time of my career I have gone through hell and high water, been on the edge of burn out once and learned a lot from all of it. I have learned how to work hard but how to keep the balance. Most of all I have learned to prioritize my personal health and well being. Then suddenly I am in an environment where even talking about work life balance is considered as rather a weird topic. Though US, in general, is admired for a lot and the mentality is that hard work is the only way. I respect that but I think that it would be time for the employers and government to look around and realize that there are also other options to achieve high results.
It seems that generally respect towards hierarchy sits tighter in the work culture here than what it does in Finland. I am of course totally oblivious to it and to me CEO is a person like any other.
Have noticed though from some colleagues; how they talk about some senior colleagues or leadership, it sounds as if they were next from god. Internally I can just chuckle, as that is such a foreign concept in work-life to me. Not that in Finland we would not respect the senior colleagues but we do not put them automatically on the high chair. They are considered still equal and easy to approach, to discuss anything.
What took me by surprise was the sick leave behavior. In Finland, in general, if you get sick, you stay home because you do NOT want to get all your colleagues sick and you tend to heal faster when you get the appropriate rest. You get the paper from doctor, which allows you to stay home and you do not need to worry about anything.
Here the work ethic is to work, no matter what. There are companies, which give you a maximum amount of sick days. If you go over that, you get fired. Regardless of whether you had a doctor's note or not. I am lucky not to work for one of those companies, yet I am surrounded by colleagues who have grown up with the traditional US work ethic.
This means it being totally normal and acceptable to have 1/3 of the office sneezing and coughing one week. The next week another 1/3 and so on. The pharmaceutical industry loves this trend and it means lot of customer for them. Buying high volumes of pills to keep everyone going through the work week.
I know that this trend has set into Finland as well to some companies, who are all about high performance. I think from all countries, Japan has the right behavioral model in place already for years. In Japan if you have flu symptoms, yet you choose to go to work, you at least wear a protection mask to prevent your colleagues from getting the virus.
Talking about vacations, in Finland you get, by law, a minimum 27 days of vacation per year. Depending on the industry, Saturdays may or may not count if you take Mon-Fri off. Which I admit, makes no sense in the modern world. Finland has only 13 public holidays left. If they hit Saturday or Sunday, they will not result to additional day off during the weekdays.
In US vacation comes along one's the loyalty to the company. If you start in a new company you get 10 - 15 days and need to work several years to increase the amount of vacation days. There are, depending the company and industry, 6 - 12 public holidays. Depending on the company and industry, some of those may be fixed ones e.g. 4th July and some are floating ones. Means you can take them when it suits you best from work perspective. Also, if the public holiday hits Sunday you get the following day off and if it hits Saturday, you get the Friday off.
In my case, as I was able to keep my seniority, I have actually slightly more vacation in practical terms than what I had in Finland, as the floating public holidays can be linked to vacation.
Before I moved lot of Finns kept saying "In US you will not have the same health care benefits and everything will be so expensive". Well, I think that is not a fair statement at least when one works. The health care benefits do often come with better benefits than what one could ever get in Finland. If you do not work, then you do have an issue. As a foreigner there is little business to be here unless you work anyways. The system here drives to get people to work.
Which I cannot say that Finnish system is so good about. Too many people stay unemployed because they get better money that way than going to work. There is no real thrive to ensure that everyone has work. Here the rules of the game are lot harder. Everything depends on having work and being employed.
Regardless of the background, nationality or last name, with hard work and good network, one can change the stars. Here one is very open minded to hire foreigners and give them the same benefits as for an American citizen. Our household happens to be having equality when it comes to career. Which means that first time in life I see in practice that there is such things as: no difference between female or male career opportunities or income.
Not to mention the difference in the taxes one pays in Texas versus Finland, but I will get back to that in a different post.
Summa summarum, there is no better or worse in this are. I find it more educating to learn the different ways and see the impacts of those. Hoping that with the open mind some of us travel through the world, our leaders would do the same and have the courage to change things for the better. It all starts with me making the best of each situation I get. So far it has worked.
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