We work too little, we don’t like to work, we don’t work hard enough. If you believe the media and political debate, this is an established fact. “With a four-day week and work-life balance, we will not be able to maintain the prosperity of this country,” warned Friedrich Merz at the CDU Business Day 2025. “More hunger for success,” demanded VW boss Oliver Blume at the beginning of 2025. We would have to “make a collective effort again,” demanded Dr. Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller, CEO of Trumpf (proper spelling TRUMPF). And just in February of this year there was a heated debate about the alleged “lifestyle part-time” raised by the business wing of the CDU.
All of this implies that things were once different and that work ethic in Germany was better. Expectations of work performance have increased in terms of quality and rationality, explains Professor Dr. August Sahm from the Technical University of Munich, correspondingly the demands of the employees. “They not only want to work, but they demand interesting, important and valuable work.” Only this quote does not come from a current Linkedin post on the performance debate, but from an issue of “Personalwirtschaft” from 1976.
