Today marks the half-way point of my internship in Germany, which means I have one month left before heading back to Ottawa. Just like Belgium, my time here seems to be flying by. My remaining weekends are already fully booked with family visits and some little sightseeing trips, making for a very busy month. The excitement of starting a new job in a different country has worn off a bit, but it’s fascinating to see the similarities and differences in the work environment in Belgium and Germany (and Canada, for that matter).
I think the atmosphere is different than anywhere else. First off, my German is better than my French so the language barrier is a bit smaller. As people walk by your desk they say good morning or goodbye even if they're from another department and don't really know you that well. This is something that I'd never experienced before. When I had an office job in Ottawa, you would only really say hello to the people you knew or worked with directly. I was told that that saying hello and goodbye to everyone is very common in Germany, but is also dying down a little because younger generations don’t say it as much; they do not really talk to each other unless it is work-related. This isn’t something I have experienced because everyone around me seems to say hello.
In Belgium, I also noticed that everyone says hello to one another in the office. I was working full time in Belgium, so I can’t speak for every business, but just the one or two that I saw. But in that regard, they seem very similar.
As far as the actual work that I’m doing, I’m not sure how different it is from Belgium. My internship is with Siemens, which is a very big international company. This means that they have a very vertical organizational structure in place, so I often have to refer to my boss for some guidance on who to contact for certain tasks.
One thing that is the same in Germany as it is in Belgium is all the paper work and the length of time everything gets done. Half way through the internship, I’m still in contact with the HR department to make sure that I filled everything out correctly.
From Germany to Canada, there are also some differences in the working world. I found that in Canada, an office job requires you to dress up a little bit, whereas here, it seems a bit more casual (i.e. half the people come to work wearing jeans). But in the end, I think there are more similarities than differences. Just for one example, we use the same email systems and all the business processes of working in teams and passing things along from top to bottom to the correct person is more or less the same.
The position I’m working in has a lot to do with what I learned at Carleton. I took a human resource management course during my second year that focused on job descriptions, interviews, recruitment, and other topics in HR. What I am doing now focuses mainly on job profiles which have to do with the job description and everything one needs to do this job effectively. I find the work to be really interesting. Due to my English language ability, I also get asked to read over colleagues’ written English once in a while, which offers a nice little change of pace.
The one thing that I cannot seem to get used to is the keyboard for my computer. All of the letters are in the exact same position except for the Y and Z keys. On the German keyboard, they’re in opposite spots. Now I’ve come to realize how many words in German are spelled with the letter Y. I often find a lot of Z letters where they are not supposed to be.
At Siemens, the work environment is more open. This means that you do not have an office but merely a desk. The cabinets are placed in a certain way to create a sort of division between tables, or departments. There are also a lot of plants decorating the cabinets, which makes the office feel a bit more like a home. Even though the office has a more open concept, it is surprisingly easy to get work done. I find I can concentrate just as well as sitting in a cubicle.
I find it great that I can use some of the things that I learned in a different country in this job. Because the communication style at work tends to be a lot different, it's presented me with a good challenge to overcome and motivates me to keep trying harder. Through this experience, I'e learned a lot about how a German office is run, which makes me want to discover how other places in different countries around the world operate.