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There is a new word set to gain international currency soon — karoshi. It means death from overwork. According to a survey conducted by Taiwanese company 1111 Job Bank, karoshi topped the list of words and expressions making employment-related news in 2011. The implication of karoshi hogging the headlines, felt the respondents, was that there would be salary cuts and layoffs.
That’s not a good way to start the new year. “The additional problem is that such perceptions are often self-fulfilling,” says Mumbai-based HR consultant D. Singh. “Employers think that everybody is onto salary cuts, so they start doing it too. At the very least, they freeze increments. Employees become apathetic. They sometimes end up in a situation where they actually deserve a salary cut or marching orders.”
Some react the other way. They start working much harder so that they become more important to the company. They hope that by putting in many more hours, they will escape the axe. “Fear of layoffs drives ‘defensive overworking,’ as some go to extreme hours to avoid pink slips,” says Joe Robinson, work-life balance speaker, trainer and author of Don’t Miss Your Life. But those who work on weekends and skip vacations get laid off like everyone else. A tech worker who limited her vacation to a long weekend, instead of the four weeks she had coming to her because she’d worked at the firm two decades, got laid off. “Now I’m wondering where my life went,” she told me.
Karoshi has been known for a long times in Far Eastern countries like Japan, China and Taiwan. These places have a “salaryman” culture anyway. What that means is that you devote yourself to the company you work for and your employer takes precedence over everybody, even your family. In return, your job is protected. But recent economic crises have broken down that unwritten covenant; the pink slip has raised its ugly head. Employees have been left holding the short end of the stick.
“Official figures say that the Japanese work about 1,780 hours a year, slightly less than Americans (1,800 hours a year), though more than Germans (1,440),” says The Economist. “But the statistics are misleading because they do not count “free overtime”. Other tallies show that one in three men (in Japan) aged 30 to 40 works over 60 hours a week. Half say they get no overtime. Factory workers arrive early and stay late, without pay.”
The approach to work also encourages this. “The system does not set a fixed number of working hours, but depends on how long it takes workers to finish assigned tasks,” says TV news channel Focus Taiwan. “Many employees in Taiwan are required to work overtime without pay under the system. ‘Job responsibility’ has become a trend in Taiwan, affecting sectors such as technology, security and medicine.” This has spread to China too, where labour productivity is touted as a big virtue.
It’s travelling across the oceans now, to Europe and the US where jobs are getting harder to come by. Says the New Internationalist magazine: “A study by health insurer Oxford Health found that one in five Americans show up for work whether they’re ill, injured or have a medical appointment. This same obsession keeps one in five Americans from taking their vacation — a failure which has been found to put individuals at risk of early death. ‘Vacationitis’ may come from fear of returning to find someone else at your desk, or the idea that everything will collapse in your absence.”
What’s the situation in India? A recent survey shows that the country has one of the worst scores on this front. More than half of Indian employees work more than eight hours a day, says global workplace solutions provider Regus. On top of that, many take work home. Another recent survey titled the 2011 Vacation Deprivation study by online travel portal Expedia says that India is the fifth most deprived nation when it comes to taking vacations. Expectedly, Japan leads the list. Says Singh: “The choice is between a holiday and a hospital. I wonder why so many people prefer the latter; it’s costlier too.”
MAKING NEWS
What made career news in Taiwan in 2011 (% of respondents selecting it)
Karoshi 61
Unpaid leave 56
Layoffs 47
What it implies, according to the respondents (%)
A salary cut 36
Job descriptions will change 24
Layoffs 18
