Understated Ideas

Miwa Sado died from heart failure in 2013. The NHK journalist worked nearly 160 hours of overtime in the month before her death. Her cause of death was listed as karoshi, death from overwork.

Even as I type this, you've probably got someone in mind who is burnt out from work. It might be a colleague, a friend, or a family member. I have a good friend in healthcare who regularly stays past her mandated work hours, unpaid, to complete the never ending backlog of work. Another, in tech, quit his job due to the stress of long hours and overwork. Even more lament about staying late so that their bosses think they've put a lot of effort in.

No matter how many times researchers point out a negative correlation between number of hours worked and productivity, it seems to fall on deaf ears for the vast majority of employers. The higher the number of hours we work in a day or a shift, the higher the number of errors we make and the slower we are at completing a task. Longer hours at work also takes away from our ability to spend time with family and friends.

Nearly one quarter of Japanese companies surveyed by the government in 2015 admitted some employees worked more than 80 hours of overtime a month. Approximately 1 in 10 had employees working more than 100 hours of overtime. Miwa Sado wasn't the exception. She was the norm.

ILO statistics on Karoshi and Karojisatsu (suicide from overwork)

Government data showed that Singaporeans worked more hours on average than in countries well known for their overworking culture like Japan. There seems to be an “Overwork Olympics” that happens year-round. If you’re regularly sleeping 4 hours a night due to work and boasting about it, perhaps your priorities are misaligned. Sacrificing your health for the perceived self-importance that busyness creates is a worrying thing. Perpetual exhaustion from overwork shouldn’t be something we are proud about.

Thankfully things are slowly changing. The government has encouraged a more flexible work culture to help Singaporeans achieve a more ideal work-life balance. Over 250 companies have adopted more flexible work arrangements championed by the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP).

Initiative launched in 2003 by the Centre for Fathering

Other organisations have put their foot forward to encourage more family-centric activities for employees. One such example is Eat With Your Family Day (EWYFD) started by the Centre for Fathering in Singapore. In a recent update to the programme, organisations agreed to let their workers off early on a Friday every quarter to have dinner with their families.

Yet, sceptical overworked employees know better than to rejoice just yet. Penning a company policy on paper is one thing, putting it into practice is another. Employees are inclined to react to what bosses do, not what they say. If a CEO says they encourage open feedback regarding work-life balance and flexibility, but then dismisses all suggested improvements, employees inevitably start withholding their concerns and eventually leave.

However, some Singaporean companies that are looking to even out the scales include DBS, OCBC Bank, and telecoms heavyweight Singtel. DBS closes an hour and half earlier on Fridays and offers staff a half day off during their birthday month. Singtel gives its employees a variety of time off allotments including flexi-family leave, study and examination leave, and a day for community work.

Perpetual Guardian CEO Andrew Barnes, on a 4 day work week

One company in New Zealand has reaped the benefits of shorter work hours and flexible work arrangements. Perpetual Guardian experimented with a 32 hour work week earlier this year. Researchers who tracked the effects on their staff found that employees were just as productive, more punctual, and more energised. On top of that, the company has seen a significantly reduced electricity bill.

Other trials in different countries have found varied results, and understandably so. Where we live and work influences how we think about busyness as well. Italians for example are more inclined to view leisure time as a high social status marker. Americans by comparison see busyness at work as an indicator of the same.

Ultimately, Perpetual Guardian’s Andrew Barnes argues that formulating employee contracts based on an agreed level of productivity as opposed to a fixed number of hours at the office is more effective. This strategy stands to benefit working parents, caregivers, and other employees for whom flexible work schedules work best.

Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower (MOM) agrees that workplaces that prioritise work-life flexibility create a win-win scenario. The ministry has a dedicated portal covering the types of flexible work arrangements possible, and their positive impact on employee retention, satisfaction, and workplace productivity. For resistant employers, they demonstrate that investing in your employees boosts your profit margins as well.

It’s a collaborative effort to ensure fewer employees feel burnt out and overworked. Direct managers and supervisors, as well as upper management would do well to listen to the concerns brought forth by their subordinates and implement change as necessary. At the same time, government and grassroot labour organizations can lobby businesses with the hard evidence that supporting your workers doesn’t mean sacrificing profits.

Countries with a deep seated overwork culture, like Japan, will have a tough go at changing employers’ and workers’ mindsets. But change is long overdue and essential to the physical and psychological well being of Japanese employees.

Considering how much of our lives we spend at work, finding meaning and a measure of satisfaction in what we do for a living is important. It doesn’t have to be your passion. But it also shouldn’t be dreadful.

Let's talk about telling the truth.

I've learnt something over the past 5 years: once you say something it becomes real. Once said, you cannot take it back. Keep a truth unsaid and everyone can go on pretending that it doesn't exist.

Not talking about something plasters it over. There is an implicit understanding that talking about it, having a discussion about it is laborious. If you were a government, not taking a public position on something also gives you the leeway to deal with it on a case by case basis. This also allows you to deny any support for it when convenient or necessary.

I grew up in a staunchly Catholic household and attended Catholic schools for 12 years. More, if you include kindergarten. The education I received was excellent and all rounded. Our teachers cared a lot for our well being. But being gay was never discussed in any of our moral education or sexuality classes. It was something skirted around.

Somewhere in secondary school, I started to understand there was a difference between the admiration I felt for peers I looked up to, and being smitten with others. This wasn't something I spoke about except in vague terms to a select few. After all, my two best friends in secondary school were hauled to the school counsellor for dating each other. It wasn't until years and years later that I whispered the words out loud hiding under my blanket in my dorm room at uni. And I cried.

I cried because I spent years praying to God to make me straight, to make me normal. I spent my first year at university suffering from terrible insomnia, turning the same thought over and over in my mind. Late at night, when I sought out positive representations of lesbian couples online, I felt guilty, ashamed, unclean. Gay conversion therapy pamphlets were in the Sunday bulletin even at the chapel at UBC.

I internalized the homophobia. I believed I would never love or be loved the same way I saw my friends fall in love. I despaired. It took me 10 years to understand God didn't hate me, that I was always normal. It was 10 years of self-hatred and building walls to protect myself.

When I finally mustered up the courage to tell my closest friends, I felt an immense amount of relief. It quite literally felt as if a huge boulder had been removed from my chest. I no longer felt like I was drowning in shame and guilt. Those feelings still existed, but became more manageable.

I could breathe now.

The friends I told? God bless them, truly. Their reactions ranged from excitement "finally!" to nonchalance "okay cool."

When my eldest brother helped me tell my parents I was lesbian on the other hand, they took it about as well as I expected. I've absorbed the many tremendously hurtful things said, things that do not need to be rehashed. Much of it to do with religion, much more to do with disgust and shame.

Someone recently told me I was lucky to be growing up as a lesbian today. I asked him why. He said it's because being gay is cool now. It's "in." I just looked at him incredulously. He clarified that he was bullied in school a few decades ago because of one of his parents' sexuality. By comparison, today's enthusiastic showing of support for the gays is sunshine and roses.

It doesn't feel that way.

Tell a gay person growing up anywhere that being gay is cool now and they'd likely give you the same look I gave him. All the evidence points to higher rates of bullying, self-injury, suicide, and homelessness among the LGBT population. Being gay looks "cool" partly because that's how it's being marketed by companies who want LGBT individuals and their allies to spend their money on products.

It's also not that more people are gay now, it's that they're not hiding any longer. If the focus seems to be on shining a positive light on gay people today, it's because so much of history has been focused on beating them down.

It takes a lengthy amount of time to question a big chunk of what made you who you are today and then reassemble it all in a functional healthy way. Even then, when it all seems to come together, it's a continual learning, unlearning, relearning process. It's difficult and tedious.

I had a conversation with a priest last week. He told me that a Christ centred life is one based on truth and love. That attractions and identities change, but striving for truth and love in God's name never does. That loving someone is not wrong.

It turns out, after all this struggle, that the Catholic ideals of love and truth are parallel to the life I strive to lead.