Short on workers, German companies offer more worker suppleness

German companies are so anxious to be a focus for staff that they are falling over themselves to proffer perks such as long holidays, shorter hrs, flexible shifts and vacation, even though employees here already work the fewest hrs in the developed world.

Last year, state-owned rail operator Deutsche Bahn, one of the country’s biggest employers, offered workers a preference between six days extra annual leave, a 2.6% pay augment or a one-hour cut in the working week.

Of around 137,000 staff given the choice, 58% opted to add more holiday to the 28 to 30 days they already receive; 40% went for the pay rise and just 2% cut their weekly hrs to 38 from the current 39.

Sigrid Heudorf, head of employment conditions at Deutsche Bahn, told Reuters in an interview, “We have a big challenge of attracting employees and making them trustworthy to us .We have to think about what employees want’’.

The preference for more holiday was particularly pronounced among women, who account for just 23 % of Bahn employees, up from 22% in 2012. It is targeting 25 % by 2020.

Germans work fewer hrs than most, just 1,363 per worker in 2016, down from 1,452 in 2000, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development here (OECD).

That compares to an average of 1,763 in the 35-member OECD, with US workers putting in 1,783 hrs and Mexicans toil hardest – 2,255 hrs a year.

An unusually strong, sustained economic upswing combined with a shortage of people of working age has made German firms more worried about attracting employees than in other leading economies, according to a survey by staffing firm Manpower Group.

More than half of German employers are fraught to appoint employees versus a global average of 45 %, with 82 % of large firms reporting difficulty, the survey showed. The hardest roles to fill are for skilled trades, engineers and in tech.

That is not quite the case at Deutsche Bahn: its workers put in about 1,600 hrs a year, well above the German average. Its standard 39-hour week compares to the 35 hrs in the industrial zone at carmakers and engineering firms.

After a series of strikes, the IG Metall union that represents 3.9 million workers in that sector agreed to a deal this year to allow staff to cut their working week to 28 hrs for up to two years to care for children or other relatives.

Meanwhile, Europe’s largest telecoms company Deutsche Telekom accepted in April to give workers at its main German operating units 14 days extra days off in lieu of an earlier granted two-hour reduction in the work week to 36 hrs.