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.

Comments

Only?

[kuzb]

11 hours. What an improvement! This is like saying "we used to allow murder all week, but now we've limited it only to the weekends".

Re: Only?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair that would be an significant improvement.

Re:Only?

[Calydor]

Have you ever heard the expression that Rome wasn't built in a day?

Change doesn't come in leaps and bounds, it comes a single step at a time.

Re:Only?

[SScorpio]

Bunch of slackers, not even working half days (12 hours).

Re:Only?

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re:Only?

[thegarbz]

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.

Re:Only?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

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.

Re:Only?

[chihowa]

Even in America, the squeaky wheel may get the grease, but it's also the first to be replaced.

Re:Only?

[networkBoy]

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.

Because you were.
What we call routine, they call ritual.

Just hand someone from Japan your business card improperly*... if it's someone high enough then your boss and your boss's boss may have to bow in apology** for not teaching you correctly the protocol of etiquette. Of course then you get bitched at for it. (totally worth it, my boss was a dick and this was a beautifully PA opportunity to make him suffer).

* Two hands, both corners of card pinched in index finger and thumb, card facing recipient, face up. Bow (30-60 deg, depending on your back, rank, etc.), look approx at recipients feet, present card.

** hold a 90 degree bow for 30 seconds.

Re:Only?

[dj245]

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.

Re:Only?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Because you were.
What we call routine, they call ritual.

Yes, I know. After almost a dozen years with them I'm well versed in the ins and outs of Japanese business/social protocol.

Two hands, both corners of card pinched in index finger and thumb, card facing recipient, face up. Bow (30-60 deg, depending on your back, rank, etc.), look approx at recipients feet, present card. ** hold a 90 degree bow for 30 seconds.

We did a much shorter "business bow", nowhere near 30 seconds, maybe a few seconds just to show deference. And nowhere near 90 degrees, it was a much less formal thing with us and they actually started copying us when we were in an informal setting.

Because they were taught in English class that "too" and "very" are often interchangeable, many of them would shake your hand and say "Thank you too much!" lol

They were some of the best people I ever worked with, period. The company backed us 100% and took care of us like you wouldn't believe.

A client once complained *very* unfairly about me but my boss knew it was total bullshit. The client made noises about disciplining me and my boss told him not to worry, he would. He called me into his office and said, "I am disciplining you," and then he laughed and took me out to dinner at a great steak house in San Francisco.

That client really didn't like Japanese people and he would ask that I come to his lab instead of one of the Japanese guys. My boss would always tell him in fake broken English that, "No, no I discipline him like you ask, he never get to come to your place again, don't worry!" And then he'd send one of the Japanese guys cuz he knew it made the client cranky, lol.

Overtime not paid beyond 80 hours a month

[JoeMerchant]

Just because overtime won't be paid beyond 80 hours a month doesn't mean that people won't work it for social standing.

The ban on work beyond 8pm might be somewhat more effective, and less self-serving at the corporate financial level.

Sadly, if these people have been working 60+ hours a week for years, work is their life - send them home and they'll get depressed, fight with their families, and otherwise have to find some meaning to their life outside the company.

Re:Overtime not paid beyond 80 hours a month

[Maritz]

Yeah. You can change company regulations and even laws, but there is a cultural interia in Japan about working hours. It would take a concerted effort over more than one generation to change it.

Re:Overtime not paid beyond 80 hours a month

[TWX]

I've known a couple of people that worked inordinate hours as a reaction to their home life and not wanting to be there.

Unfortunately these people were themselves part of the problem. They tended to be unhappy at work too, and to spread this around the workplace generally.

Re:Overtime not paid beyond 80 hours a month

[gnick]

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.

reactions were mixed

[nimbius]

japanese: 11 hours!? ill never get anything done and my wife wont let me come home after less than 16 hours you insensitive clods!!
Americans: 11 hours...so...thats an entire 11 hour shift at just one job? not 5 jobs?
French: ....
Americans: someone call an ambulance, the french guy just dropped dead after reading the title.
dead japanese man: how shameful. ive been dead for 5 months and still manage to get to work on time. stop making excuses for yourself.

Re:reactions were mixed

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo. The average person does 6 hours of work a day. I don't mean you are at your desk for 6 hours. I mean if you stay at work for 12 hours, you get 6 hours of work done. If you stay at work for 6 hours, you get 6 hours done.

A lot of companies focus on attendance over work completed. It's a stupid metric that needs to die.

Re:reactions were mixed

[GuB-42]

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.

Quantity vs Quality

[Dorianny]

Humans can be alert and productive for only so many hours a day, differs by person but it is definitely even less then 8 for most everyone. After that something that would take 1 hours in the morning will instead take 4 hours of overtime. Of course you will not be able to get anything done in a hour in the morning either because all that overtime means that you will not get enough rest. If you are a security guard, simply being there is good enough but if your work involves higher thought processes then quality beats quantity when it come to overall productivity. Something which is unfortunately lost in today's Corporate culture where the most valued personal is often the people responding to emails at 1am, no matter what gibberish

Re:Quantity vs Quality

[JoeMerchant]

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.

Re:Maybe I should work for Panasonic...

[__aaclcg7560]

I thought most of them just cheated the system and made you exempt (even though you supposedly have to have either management tasks, significant decision making authority about how to do your job, or be a recognized professional - which IT isn't).

Not for contractors who work through a contracting agency.

Re:30 hour workweek experiment

[clodney]

I'm too lazy to look for the cite, but I have read in the past that in the short term virtually any change you make is good and results in a productivity improvement. Then the novelty wears off and you go back to the old baseline. So people may be motivated to work harder or try to get more done in a 30 hour week initially, but that effect tends to wear off once it becomes the new normal.