After my roughly two weeks in Spain, I have learned and experienced numerous things that will leave an impact on my life. From being emerged into the culture of Barcelona to being in a classroom setting throughout the two weeks at OneCoWork, I was constantly learning new information whether I knew it at the time or not.
One of the main things I noticed while being abroad was the nuances between doing business in Spain compared to doing business in the United States. A huge difference between how business is conducted in Spain and the United States is the balance of work and employees? lives in Spain. In Spain, it is very common to have a ?siesta? in the middle of the day usually between 2pm and 5pm. This ?siesta? is used as a relaxation time for employees to do whatever they want as a break from their workday. Most employees usually go back to their residence to take a nap in order to get a well-deserved break from the hectic workday and to be better rested for the last part of their workday. I do not know of any businesses in the United States that do this, and I believe that it would probably benefit a lot of employees and companies because of how well-rested the employees will be for the second half of their workday.
Another difference I noticed between businesses in Spain and the United States is how much passion is in the family businesses in Spain. In the United States, most of us are used to shopping at corporate businesses and eating at chain restaurants. However, in Spain, there are a lot more family and local businesses that people usually shop at. For the majority of my time in Spain, I ate at local restaurants that I could see how passionate the owners were about the food and about providing a quality service. In addition, the company that our class visited, Celler Diaz, was such a good example of passion being in family businesses. After talking with the owners and seeing how much they cared about their products, it inspired me to purchase products from their business.
These two differences I mentioned are what make businesses in Spain unique and successful. Both of these differences have shown to be effective and are the reason these businesses are able to thrive, and I feel like businesses in the United States should try to adopt these business practices to see if they work for them.