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Panasonic Wants Employees To Relax, Limits Work Days To 11 hours (cnet.com)
Japan is notorious for its long working hours, which have been blamed for a national health crisis known as "karoshi" -- death from overwork. From a report on CNET: Panasonic hopes to curb this, instructing its 100,000-ish employees to work no later than 8 p.m. each day, reports Asahi Shimbun. This hour reduction still enables a 55-hour working week, but the directive from Panasonic President Kazuhiro Tsuga also limited overtime to 80 hours a month.
Depends not only on the person, but also the task. Implementing complex algorithms efficiently in code tends to require more attention and focus than sitting in hours long meetings listening for the occasional cue to speak for 30 seconds.
I've read a story somewhere about the manager of an engineering department dealing with critical systems at NASA during the space race.
He imposed 9 to 5 work days, as part of his plan to promote a healthy routine. He noticed that overwork leads to mistakes and that nullifies any productivity gain made during extra hours.
Many people probably assume it starts after 40hs a week like in the US.
For white collar workers with a salary of more than $47,476, that's not necessarily true. I've had positions where it was explicitly explained to me that the 40 hour week was a minimum and less than expected.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
The Japanese put in a lot of hours, but not much of that is "working". Japan's productivity is only 60% of America's.
Productivity is a measure of output for a given workforce, not working time. Japan's problem isn't one of people surfing the web at work, it's arcane hierarchical structures getting in the way of getting things done.
I remember working at one of our offices in Tokyo. Very simple task, we found a better way of doing something but to do that we needed another department to briefly do something for us:
USA Approach: Walk over, knock on the door, "Can you quickly do this for us?", "Yeah sure", "Thanks"
Japan Approach: Walk to your boss, sell the idea. He walks to his boss, sells the idea. His boss walks to his boss who oversees enough of the company that now the other department falls under him, he asks his way down the chain to see if it works. Eventually it gets to the bottom, person says "yeah sure". Up it goes again, over it goes again, yay we have approval. Walk over, knock on the door.
No time to surf the web when your productivity suffers due to the horrendous inefficiencies of the workplace.
I worked for a Japanese-based company in the 80's.....oftentimes they made decisions by not doing anything. Eventually the issue "resolved itself" and that was that. If something required intervention from above it was seen as a bad thing or a personal failing, maybe even somewhat shameful.
They were soooooooooo non-confrontational that just deciding where to go for lunch would be a multi-day process. We (they) eventually settled on 2 or 3 "favorite" places and they (we) would go to them in rotation.
If I suggested a buffet or burger place they would act like I'd lost my mind or was trying to talk them into a sex change. Me and some of the other American guys used to do it just to see the shocked looks on their faces.
"Yeah, I know it's Thursday (the 'Wada's Sushi Bar' day) but how about we go to Mad Mike's Burgers instead?"
A frenzied, whispered conversation would take place between them in Japanese for a minute or two and then one would say, "Ah, perhaps. Yes maybe we could....but do you not like Wada's Sushi Bar? We think it is an excellent place." (you are going to disturb the harmonious fluidity of our well-established lunch routine)
If we persisted then they would accede, but it always felt like we were forcing them to alter their well-worn lunch cycle and throwing the balance of the Universe out of whack.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The Japanese put in a lot of hours, but not much of that is "working". Japan's productivity is only 60% of America's. There is a social taboo to leave work before your boss, so people stay late and surf the web. The bosses are promoted based on seniority rather than ability, and are often incompetent with no incentive to take the initiative on more enlightened working conditions. It is better to just stick to prevailing social conventions and keep a low profile.
America: The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Japan: The nail that sticks up will be hammered back down.
I have worked in Japanese companies for almost 8 years in total, 7 months of which was in Japan. Everything in your post is true except "so people stay late and surf the web". This is not my experience. In my experience, people stay late and do NOT surf the web. The open floor plan in most Japanese offices makes goofing off unnoticed nearly impossible.
Some people are doing productive work, but slowly. Others were doing unproductive work (again, slowly). Others take frequent visits to other people in different departments. Meetings which require 2-3 people but 8 people are invited also help run up the man hours. Surfing the web for non-work reasons was strictly during lunch hours and breaks, I never saw it.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.