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These German cities offer the best work-life balance

A new report shows where in Germany it's easiest to strike that perfect balance between career and personal life. Sorry Berlin and Frankfurt - you didn't make it into the top ten.

Published: 7 April 2017 11:07 CEST

These German cities offer the best work-life balance

Photos: Pexels.com

Whether it's being able to get off work early on a Friday, or having time to take your child to their sports game, these aspects of a good work-life balance are quite important to German professionals, according to various recent reports.

A new analysis shows where in the country workers can best have the best of both worlds, with data compiled by employer rating site kununu and career social network Xing, and a graph released by Statista on Thursday.

The two career websites analyzed 65,000 ratings of employers from 30 big cities in Germany in 2016.

SEE ALSO: These German companies have the happiest workers

The results showed that employers in the Baden-Württemberg city of Karlsruhe received the highest average rating for work-life balance of 3.7 out of 5. In particular, the report found that professionals in the city were most often able to work from home compared to any other city, with 56 percent of companies offering this possibility.

And about seven out of ten professionals had flexible working hours rules. On top of that, Karlsruhe came in second behind Kiel for the percentage of employers that offer childcare at 22 percent. For Kiel, this was 23 percent.

Following closely behind Karlsruhe was Münster in North Rhine-Westphalia with a score of 3.64 out of 5.

The Baden-Württemberg capital of Stuttgart came in third at 3.6. Here two-thirds of the reviews surveyed indicated that employers allowed workers to freely allocate their work hours.

The “other German capital” of Bonn came in fourth place, followed by the Bavarian capital of Munich at fifth place.

The hip Millennial hotspot of Berlin fell to a disappointing 22nd place – and to the probable consternation of Berliners, behind Frankfurt at 21st place.

The report noted that the four cities at the very bottom of the totem pole all came from around the Rhineland-Ruhr valley region: Essen (3.34), Mönchengladbach (3.25), Duisburg (3.21), and Gelsenkirchen (3.14).

The graph below shows the top ten, and bottom two German cities for work-life balance:

Infografik: In diesen Städten ist die Work-Life-Balance am besten | Statista

Mehr Statistiken finden Sie bei Statista

Drug and harassment allegations plunge Bejart Ballet into turmoil

Bejart Ballet dancers perform at Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" in the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, on April 3, 2013. credit: YURI KADOBNOV / AFP

The company, founded by the late legendary French choreographer Maurice Bejart, was placed under audit on June 4 over allegations touching on its “working environment and inappropriate behaviour”.

The Maurice Bejart Foundation announced the audit just a week after revealing that the affiliated Rudra Bejart ballet school had fired its
director and stage manager and suspended all classes for a year due to “serious shortcomings” in management.

While the foundation has revealed few details of the allegations facing the two institutions, anonymous testimonies gathered by trade union
representatives and the media paint a bleak picture.

Swiss public broadcaster RTS reported that a number of unidentified former members of the Bejart Ballet Lausanne (BBL) company had written to the foundation, describing the “omnipresence of drugs, nepotism, as well as psychological and sexual harassment”.

Many of the accusations allegedly focus on Gil Roman, who took the helm of BBL when its founder died in 2007.

Roman did not respond to AFP requests to the foundation or BBL seeking comment.

‘Denigration, humiliation’

The French choreographer faced similar allegations during a secret audit a year later, but was permitted to stay on and continue as before, according to RTS and the union representing the dancers.

“We cannot understand what might have been in that audit that would have allowed them to clear him completely,” Anne Papilloud, head of the SSRS union that represents stage performers in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, told AFP.

“The accusations back then were word-for-word the same as today: harassment, denigration, humiliation, insults, temper tantrums, drugs,” she said, citing former company members who had contacted the union in recent weeks and had said they were around during the 2008 audit.

One dancer told RTS on condition of anonymity that it was common for Roman to publicly humiliate dancers who made a misstep, while another said he often asked dancers to bring him marijuana.

“Drugs were part of everyday life at Bejart Ballet,” the broadcaster reported her saying.

Papilloud meanwhile told AFP that the “vast majority of the testimonies I have heard have been about psychological harassment”.

Drug-use had been mentioned, mainly linked to how the drugs “provoked outbursts of anger”, she said.

She said she had also heard a small number of complaints about sexual harassment, although not involving Roman.

‘Terror’

But what stood out most in the dozens of accounts she had heard in recent weeks was the sheer “terror” people described.

Their reaction to what they had been through was “extremely strong”, she said, “almost at the level of post-traumatic stress”.

Papilloud said that as a union representative she had long been aware that BBL was considered a difficult place to work, with low pay compared to the industry standard and little respect for working hours.

But the recent revelations of “an extremely toxic working environment” had come as a shock, she said.

Over 30 current and former BBL members had contacted the union following the upheaval at the Rudra Bejart ballet school, she said.

The school, which halted classes and fired its long-time director Michel Gascard and stage manager Valerie Lacaze, his wife, was reportedly fraught with psychological abuse and tyrannical over-training.

One student described how she had found herself surrounded by teachers and other students who “humiliated and belittled” her, the president of the foundation’s board, Solange Peters, told RTS.

One teacher present at the time reportedly compared the scene to a “lynching”.

The revelations about the school appeared to have “opened a Pandora’s Box”, spurring alleged victims of similar abuse at BBL to come forward, according to Papilloud.

“We have really been inundated,” she said, adding that many hope that “this time, things can change”.

Following close communication with the foundation, the union too is hopeful that the current audit will be handled differently than the last one, with more openness and independence, Papilloud said.

“I think this will not be an audit where things are swept under the carpet.”

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