UNEXPECTED WORK CULTURE SHOCKS IN THE NETHERLANDS | from an Australian expat

[Music] hi everyone welcome back to my channel if you're new here my name is Lisa and I'm an Australian expert living in Amsterdam in this video I want to share with you the five culture shock moments that I have experienced since I first started working in the Netherlands 2 and 1/2 years ago in the last 2 and 1/2 years I have worked for two very different kind of companies I worked for a commercial international organization and I have also worked for a predominantly Dutch organization which is where I'm currently at right now so without further Ado let's get started on the first culture shock that I experienced the first thing that really took me by surprise was when I first started job hunting when you are looking through job ads it's very likely that you'll come across wordings such as this upon positive evaluation will offer you a permanent contract or perhaps your contract will be extended for another year the one-year temporary contract is in fact a very common practice in the Netherlands in the Netherlands I feel that there is a genuine intention to keep you on as a long-term staff member or a permanent staff member and that one year is really seen more as a probation period whereas in Australia a lot of the contract roles really are contract roles and there is a hard end date either because of funding constraints or project constraints just keep that in mind if you are also in the same position you're job hunting and you're seeing this a lot don't let that put you off you can also always ask the employer during the interview stage what their long-term um Ambitions are for that position and whether they have any intention of keeping you on as a long-term staff member the second thing that I experienced a bit of culture shock over was sick leave in the Netherlands I'm not sure how it is in your country but in Australia every employee is legally entit entitled to only 10 paid sick days a year if you're in the situation where you need more than 10 days of sick leave then you have to take the subsequent sick days as unpaid leave in the Netherlands an employee is entitled to sick pay for the first two years of illness which prevents them from working this sick pay must be at a minimum 70% of the employees current wages this sick leave not only covers physical illness like catching a cold or a flu or almost serious physical condition it also covers mental health conditions or mental health illness such as for instance needing to go in stress leave or burnout leave it's just so mindblowing to me that here people take your mental health just as seriously as your physical health the fact that people can go on burnout leave and be paid during that period and be supported to recover and to come back to the workplace is truly amazing you can't choose how often you get sick you can't choose how long you are sick for it takes away the stress and the guilt that people often feel when they fall sick and they need to take time off work to actually recover you know conversely in Australia I feel the 10day sick leave rule it puts this kind of expectation on the worker to still go to work and turn up even when they're not feeling 100% well I know from personal experience I think in the whole 10 years of working full-time I have not taken more than 10 days of sick leave in total I would literally go to work feeling terrible feeling really sick and feel that I had to be there the third culture shock that I experien is in relation to pronouncing Dutch colleagues names this is more of a language related barrier not maybe Netherlands specific because you would encounter the same issue if you had to work abroad in a different country where they speak a language that is not your native language but in my case it's something I really struggled with before I moved to the Netherlands believe it or not I had never met a Dutch person I had never come across a Dutch name I knew nothing about the Dutch language as well in my current role I work as I said in a predominantly Dutch workplace and many of my colleagues have very traditional Dutch names and my role requires me to meet a lot of new people on a regular basis therefore it is very important that I get people's names right and I remember it as quickly as possible I remember my first day being so challenging because everyone was coming up to me to introduce themselves at least for me it's not possible for me to remember 20 names as it is in one go but when it's a name that you're not immediately familiar with or that you've never heard of before and that you don't even know how to spell that can be like an added layer of complexity and it's also very embarrassing if someone says hey yeah just send me an email when you want to catch up or can you set up a a calendar invite with me and you wouldn't even begin to know how to spell this person's name so my only advice here is if you're new to the Netherlands then it really does help to familiarize yourself with the Dutch alphabet at least because that will give you a lot of guidance on how to pronounce Dutch people's names and to just give you some very like small General pronunciation tips in this video names that start with j would sound like they start with a y for instance yope y Yan uh yurun yurus just realize that all guys names if there is an e at the end of someone's name in English that would be silent but in Dutch that has an a sound so for instance suzan it's spelled the same way as in English but you would pronounce that suzan there are also many other names that are spelled exactly the same way as in English but they are pronounced slightly differently because the Dutch alphabet has a different pronunciation so for instance Eva is pronounced Ava iris is pronounced Iris Peter is pronounced Peter and so on so forth there's many other names like that if in doubt I think there's nothing wrong with just asking your colleague how to pronounce their name no one's going to get offended by that people would understand and I think people would appreciate the effort that you put in to pronounce someone's name correctly the fourth culture shock that I experienced when I first started working here was how seriously people take summer vacation so literally in the Netherlands and in many other parts of Europe work literally comes to a standstill between the periods of I would say end of June to start of September and then everything resumes again from September until the Christmas break and this is not limited to just office workers it also includes trades people who will not take on new jobs during the summer period and it also includes shopkeepers particularly in the areas that are not so touristy and more for locals it's very normal to see shopkeepers put up signs on their windows and say I'm on leave for 3 to 4 weeks I won't be open during this period in Australia as you would know our summer period coincides with the Christmas period so we only really get one big break a year and I certainly have never seen even during the Christmas period shopkeepers saying I am on leave for 3 to four weeks and I'm not going to be open for that long I've never seen that in Sydney or bigger cities you know I think it's great that you get two big breaks throughout the year I do actually think it makes people a little bit more efficient because you know that you have to work really hard for 2 to 3 months and then you're going to have a big break to look forward to so that's always really really nice final one um it's a little bit complex I'm going to try to explain it as best as I can it's in relation to my shock at seeing mothers returning to work 3 months after they have given birth so firstly I do not want to get into the nitty-gritty details of maternity leave and parental leave in the Netherlands I haven't gone through this process myself for the purpose of this video I will just share with you that in the Netherlands um for every child that you have the pregnant employee is entitled to 16 weeks of paid maternity leave pregnant employees are required to go on 4 to 6 weeks before their due date which means they have about 10 to 12 weeks left of leave after they give birth there are also some additional leave arrangements for both parents not going to go into those but essentially what I'm trying to say is that it is totally normal for mothers to return to the workplace around 3 months after they have given birth now I know this really depends on where you come from for me it was a huge shock in Australia there is a legal require reement to provide 12 months of maternity leave to an employee it's not that those full 12 months are paid that's certainly not the case I wish it was so but it's not the case but because of this legal requirement it's very normal for women to go on maternity leave for at least 6 months if not the full year and perhaps 16 weeks is considered to be very normal or even generous compared to your home country but for me it was just like a really big shock to see my colleague back so soon after I said bye to her when she was pregnant personal experience or story that I can share with you is that when this said pregnant colleague was about to go on maternity leave I asked my team whether we should maybe plan like a goodbye baby shower for her because we probably weren't going to see her for a while and my team member was like genuinely confused by my suggestion he was just like well she's going to come back soon like she's going to come back in a few months so I no I don't think it's necessary I think it's too much it's too over the top to plan a party and I kind of understand that now because she really was back very soon after that after she left and to be honest I can't believe that women are not demanding more to send a 3-month old baby into daycare for me would just be so heartbreaking cuz they're so tiny I've always assumed that if I were to have a baby I would take at least one year off to take care of the baby and also to physically and emotionally recover um 3 months just seems like such a short amount of time for me but again I realize that that's all relative and this is all because I've been brought up in a different country with a different set of cultural norms around maternity leave so that's it those are all my five culture shock moments I hope you found those interesting and maybe some of those were surprising or maybe some of them were not so surprising let me know in the comments down below what your thoughts are about that if you like this video then as always please give it a thumbs up and if you haven't done so already please make sure you hit the Subscribe button down below if you want to watch more videos like these otherwise I'll see you in the next video [Music] bye

Channel: Leesa Yu

Views: 35,768

Keywords: moving to the netherlands, living in the netherlands, living in amsterdam, culture shock, dutch culture, working in the netherlands, finding a job in the netherlands, expat in amsterdam, australian in the netherlands, culture shocks in the workplace, working abroad as an expat, working in the netherlands as a foreigner, working and living in the netherlands, working in australia, culture shock in the netherlands, dutch life, amsterdam expat guide

Id: KOfdNpGN9SU

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 08 2023