“I worked in the Netherlands with teams of mainly Dutch, Germans and English. My English colleagues would sometimes complain that the Germans and Dutch were "rude" or at least not as polite as they should be. This was probably the result of differences in the use of the English language where the Dutch and Germans are less familiar to make frequent use of "please" and "thank you" but might have been a bit more direct in their communication style which could have been perceived as less polite by the British colleagues.”
“Working for a company in the UK is not considered to be a job for life. I think in Spain there is an aspiration and the job is considered more long term.”
“In Anglo-Saxon countries, work-life balance is much more respected. People go home at 5 pm – fewer breaks during the day shorter lunches: the same amount of work is done in a shorter amount of time”
“The way some cultures address politeness has hindered communication in certain past projects. For instance, I have experienced issues in projects involving British partners where their polite comments in report reviews or polite answers to e-mails were interpreted as an approval whilst it was actually meant to be a respectful critic.”
“Understanding that sometimes yes means no. I am more used to working with direct people (Dutch / German), and not so much with British where they politely tell you no with a yes.”
” I was working in London and in the British culture they are not as direct as French people to say things. Even if you are wrong they will tell you “I agree, I get your point it is a good idea”.
“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”.