Reading. Read the two texts below and do the exercises that follow.

Read the two texts below and do the exercises that follow.

A The British are notorious for working the longest hours in Europe. For many of us, long hours are a form of addiction. For some, it’s about proving your dedication. For others, it is just part of the culture. But Britain’s long hours’ culture is not necessarily achieving a great deal; British companies are 25% less productive than their continental counterparts.

When the BBC’s Money programme asked office staff at one large company to try to keep their set hours for a week (some of them work up to 60 hours a week), they were unwilling to try. But management was keen to reduce stress by improving the balance between employees’ home and work life, and thought the experiment might be a good way to get everyone thinking about their working hours and how they might be able to reduce them.

As the week progressed, staff found it hard to cope with the pressure of leaving work undone. They felt they were letting people down and worried about the effect on the business. By the middle of the week, the pressure was bringing some of them to breaking point. With the help of work/life specialist Lynne Copp, the stressed workers were encouraged to try delegation, reorganising priorities and making meetings more focused. Did the company suffer? Despite some catching up the following week, the running of the company as a whole did not seem to be greatly affected. In fact it had caused a reappraisal of the whole attitude to staying late.

B Having lived and worked in the Netherlands for nearly five years, I know what a wonderfully comfortable place it is. There is full employment and everyone goes home at 5: 30 pm. But despite this enviable life style, an average of 90, 000 Dutch employees fail to turn up for work each year on the grounds of suffering ‘overspannen’ (work-related stress) – a condition which allows them to take a year off on full pay and then, if they are not cured, to enter into the benefits system for the rest of their lives.

Worried about an upcoming merger? Teased or ignored by your colleagues? Don’t like your desk? Faced with a long commute? Overworked? Underworked? Feel like a break? Simply get a doctor to agree that you are under a little stress, and a year off work on full pay can be yours.

So obsessed are the Dutch with the idea of stress that there is even a ministry for its study and regulation. As far as it is concerned, stress is never caused by weakness or incompetence: instead, it is a fact of modem life, caused by a working environment that is less than perfect. It distributes leaflets concerning the management of stress within the workplace, encourages companies to set up “internal steering groups to define structures for stress management” and says that the best solution is “listening and talking.” The condition is, essentially no different from the ‘stress’ imagined by rich New Yorkers, except that in the Netherlands it is employers and taxpayers who pick up the bill.