Hm, maybe that's not specific to Germany, but in this company there are lots of people who think something like this:
- Totally not my problem, see how you figure it out for yourself
- We've never done it that way
- We've always done it this way
- Don't look left and right while doing your work
- I don't want to improve but I don't like where you are
- If you're not physically at work you can't be working at all
I think Germans sometimes have a specific sense of order and structure for work. Also succesful people, like in hard-working and making something out of themselves, are often belittled and in general nothing to look up to.
These cultural "problems" creep into workplaces, too. To paraphrase a bit more:
Work is a place you go to and leave after 8 hours. 8.5 hours precisely, because of 0.5 hours of lunch break. Don't stay longer, but NEVER leave 15 minutes earlier. You also don't hang out with colleagues for a beer or food, except for the colleagues from your pack. But you only meet those in your free time to talk about the other colleagures.
Also the other packs/departments are probably all idiots. "Online people" don't work at all, because I never see them on the phone, they just chill and surf the web probably. And they even work less now that they stayed at home because of Covid.
I've experienced all of this not only in my current but in other companies and I start to think it's a workplace-culture thing, where Germans don't realise that we're all in the same team but some people work just differently than others. This leads to a lot of envy, bad mood and stress, because I've always got the feeling that I need to fight. Fight for how I work, what I work on, how I communicate that to clients and so on.
So, I'd like my leaders up in the C-level to work on "relaxing the people", connecting the departments, thinking more about purpose and mission and vision and less about whether we can make 5% more profit this year.
I'd love if we would get something like a Skillshare/Udemy/LinkedIn learning membership for all of us and you get two hours a week to learn whatever you want, so everybody can become better.
I'd love if the company would support renting a bike, but "it's too complicated/too much work". I'd also love if I could get rid of most of the wall units here in our space and instead get a couch and some plants. Best we will get (learned that today) is that we can paint one wall in a color we'd like. We might even be allowed to paint that in our working time, but we'll see.
I don't expect middle to larger companies to be like a startup and everything is possible all the time and so on, but I think in Germany we need to see work more as a place where you are also allowed to have fun and enjoy the environment and learn and develop yourself and look next to the road and so on...