Staying in the office Vs Productivity

Happy Worker's day!

I find today at El País an article that states an embarrasing truth. In these days where we face The challenge of Balancing Personal and Professional Lives, we find some data that puts spaniards coworkers and companies in an awkward and contradictory situation: while a spanish employee puts in the office more hours than the average european worker, we are rank far behind on productivity.

The article describes the situation: an employee has finished his/her work and is ready to leave home at a reasonable hour. He looks around and sees all his fellow workers with their noses still stuck in their screens. So he/she feels bad about leaving earlier, so decides to stay longer in the office even if there is no work to be done.

Unfortunately, staying long in the office is still a means of beeing perceived as a value to the company, whereas the trend in the rest of Europe and US is a results oriented policy rather than the presential policy we have here. To that statement we need to add the difficult job market in Spain, with traditionally high rates of unemployment (not the case currently) that make employess fear a job change as a unpleasant experience.

My wishlist: results/effort oriented policies (starting at primary school), variable retribution linked to productivity and flexible office hours or telework where possible. The only means to achieve a balance between family and work.