Global Life-Work Balance Index 2025: Work-life balance is not negotiating anymore and most of the employees are now highly motivated by it.
In the Randstad 2025 work survey, work-life balance overtook compensation and pay as the most important factor to workers defined as a priority in their current or future workplace as the careers survey revealed an average of 83% of employees prioritized work-life balance in their current or future workplace as compared to compensation, which received an average of 75%.
This may be explained by the COVID-19 pandemic and the culture of being on all the time that caused the fading of the boundaries between professional and personal life and difficulties of the employee to get more or less completely off the job.
Remote, avoiding the traditional use of the term work-life balance, has transformed it to become life-work balance, where the former is the prior and that work ought to be a benefit of life and one should have work within the context of serving the life.
In its survey of the Global Life-Work Balance Index 2025, it points out countries that are on the lead, and factors that drive much of the workforce in the world are economical, technological, and societal.
New Zealand was able to hold on to the top 1 spot yet again, with an increased score of more than six points as there was a minor rise in minimum wage as well as European nations receiving a majority of the countries on top 10 but incredibly none of those were in the Asia and the MENA region.
Quite on the contrary, such giant economies of the globe as India scores 42 out of 60 in the world ranking and 45.81 as the annual statutory leave is 35 days; the United States of America is doomed to burn out epidemic with excessive working hours and few time off and gets a 59th score out of 60 countries surveyed in 2025.
Below are the world’s 10 best countries for life-work balance in 2025:
| Rank | Country & Capital | Index Score/100 | Statutory Annual Leave | LGBTQ+ Inclusivity |
| 1 | New Zealand, Wellington | 88.67 | 32 days | 75 |
| 2 | Ireland, Dublin | 81.17 | 30 days | 72 |
| 3 | Belgium, Brussels | 75.91 | 30 days | 74 |
| 4 | Germany, Berlin | 74.65 | 30 days | 81 |
| 5 | Norway, Oslo | 74.2 | 35 days | 87 |
| 6 | Denmark, Copenhagen | 73.76 | 35 days | 80 |
| 7 | Canada, Ottawa | 73.46 | 17 days | 78 |
| 8 | Australia, Canberra | 72.1 | 30 days | 75 |
| 9 | Spain, Madrid | 71.94 | 36 days | 83 |
| 10 | Finland, Helsinki | 70.86 | 30 days | 74 |
Source: Remote – Global Life-Work Index 2025
Methodology: Remote measures the level of the life-work balance among April, 60 world GDP strongest countries, grading the countries on scale of 100. The score is arrived at by use of the minimum wage, sick leave, maternity leave, availability of healthcare, happiness of the people, average hours of work, and stand-up to LGBTQ+ inclusivity.
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