“In the Spanish culture when we have to face a new challenge we quickly make a preliminary scheme and we start working on it. We may have only one kick-off meeting and we will reduce meetings to minimum. As soon as we face any problem we prepare meetings to tackle them and if it’s now possible we go through it. If there is a mistake we correct it and we go to the next task. On the other hand, in the Anglo-Saxon world the approach would be different. Probably 2 or 3 kick-off meetings and few preliminary discussions to have every detail of the project defined. It would always be better to
“In Canada and also England each one is responsible for their own safety. When you ask for safety responsibilities they didn’t use to look to the safety department. This behaviour, most of the times, is totally different in Spain where in more of the business all the members of the company look at safety department as unique safety responsible.”
"Colleagues in a management position in England are more approachable”
“While working with a consultancy from London which had a number of varying nationalities engaged on the project (…) A number of the employees from the consultancy were very direct and to the point whereas our approach was very “British” and not direct. This did lead to a few issues when prior work was been discussed and one person’s work who was in the meeting was criticised by the consultancy. Where we would say the work “needs improvement” they were quite blunt and said this was “poor”.
“I just want to highlight one of the main differences between Spanish people and rest of Europe, it refers to lunch-time, Spanish people can spend one and half hour even two hours whereas British people for example just spend 15 minutes eating a sandwich in their own desks. Obviously I prefer British choice, but unfortunately Spanish culture is too far away from this point of view…”
“English people are more rigid in the sense that a meeting must be planned beforehand, but once it is in place, it will not suffer any changes. In Spain, I have experienced the opposite. ”
“In London, people understand that they go to the office to work, they try to do their job as quick and efficient as possible so that they can leave at a reasonable time and enjoy the rest of the day with their family. They do not talk to each other that much, they only discuss the football match for 2 minutes and they are focused on doing what they have to do.”
“During my work in England I observed that the people working more and more effectively than the others are quickly noticed and promoted regardless of their origin and work seniority.”
“Politeness in THE UK is sometimes misleading for a straight culture such as the Spanish one. I have left meetings thinking how good it was and in reality it was a terrible meeting ”
“In the UK the balance between work and personal life is much more appreciated, respected and established. Nobody gets blamed or pointed because of sticking to their stipulated and contractual working hours. This is something that is not commonly accepted back in Spain. I have heard in several occasions the discussion about this topic being related actually to real productivity or lack of commitment. In The UK, in general terms, the employee rights are set as priority and looked after with special care”