Why work-life balance is a struggle in Asia

Subscribe to our YouTube channel for free here:

The Tokyo government is set to introduce a four-day work week for its employees starting in April 2025, following a similar move made by Singapore in December. Governments and companies in Asia have generally been slower than their Western counterparts in taking steps to adopt a healthy work-life balance. For decades, Japan’s work culture has been synonymous with gruelling hours and self-sacrifice. Is Tokyo’s introduction of a four-day work week the start of a shift away from a culture of overwork in Japan and across the region, or is it just a pipe dream for Asia?

Support us:

Follow us on:

#scmp #Asia #Japan

[wantonNoodle]

From what I have observed, here are the wrong things in many of Asian offices:

1. If you are done with your job, you are still expected to stay in the office until your managers leave the office, even though your managers come later than you and spend their time in office chit-chatting and taking breaks every so often.
2. When you finish your job fast, that means you can get more workload, so someone else could be fired for 'efficiency' until your workload becomes too much.
3. There is always someone cheaper than you who are willing to do more. If there are not so many around, they bring in foreign talents to make us more competitive. We are simply overpopulated.


Outside the company, it is also drilled in our education system. From young age we are told that hard work is the only key to success. I spent most of my time in school and tuitions more than at home even on weekends, so working long hours in the office just felt natural to me once I joined the workfrorce.

[disappearintothesea]

I lived and worked in South Korea for 2 years. It was brutal! I’m so happy to be back in the US working 4 days a week for my 40hours and leaving everything at work. I know a 4 day work week is still a privilege tho.

[NHJDT]

No wonder people don't want to have kids. There's no time to spend time with the kids

[lyhthegreat]

japan has the lowest amount of annual leaves too, most of them get like 10 and they are strongly discouraged from using up all of it.

[fin]

"singapore gave workers the right to request four-day work weeks" what nonsense is this. Stop this lie please

[arunbenny]

It’s a struggle everywhere for poor and middle class income families

[kawalangdalawahan]

It’s because of the Confucian work ethic, basically saying your only source of worth is how obedient you are and how hard you work.

[Audi_Li]

I live and work in South East Asia for a National Scale Company. Work 10 - 12 hours per day and sometimes you get to work on saturday and sunday without any leave change on the weekdays. Economy is hard, such things as food, housing, and gas being the important things are rising up sharp every year. We dont have any choice but to stay and keep dreaming for a “real” 9-5

[carlossantos]

The strange thing is that overwork is often an indicative of low productivity, in most cases a reduced staff of let's say two or three people are doing more effort to do the same job that would be done in half of the time by a team of five or six coworkers.

Speaking about Japan and South Korean in particular I think comes off unnoticed the desire to appear busy for the sake of it that is common in those two societies. This fact alone can push to the creation of unnecessary or redundant tasks to be fulfilled only to make the one doing it appear busy and as handworker as possible. Japanese offices are also notorious for their attachment to old technologies - and it's not even uncommon that you'll find a fax-machine still being used there.

At the end it doesn't add up, at least in the Japanese case because if the whole country is lock in this culture of overwork to the point of death and at expense of low birth rates so how productivity have become stagnated? It's not only even that they're overworking themselves to death they are doing this to add nothing or very little to their annual GDP.

[hollowmstr]

There is a saying in Asia, "The corporation owns you...". This is an unfortunate situation for many Asian Countries, the Execs at the top play while the hourly workers suffer.

[gabdongipark]

Fix hours and let people leave without judging
Let people gave a life outside of work

[anna_pham]

Because of greed, they want to exploit their employees as much as possible. Simple as that.

[stellatong]

It’s not just in Asia, this is happening everywhere

[michaelwong]

Work = life; Life = Work. This is the problem. If you don't work, you don't have the means to life. You don't have the financial means to life. Hence, you sacrifice the well-being of your life for work. Your life eventually becomes your work, and ultimately, you're consumed by work.

[huntress]

It depends very much on what you do as a job. For law firms, consulting, etc... 60 hour weeks are the norm, even in Europe (speaking very much from experience). Also, upper management in companies work A LOT. The only people who have cushy 38 hours are employees in big companies such as Volkswagen. And in the US hustle culture is a big thing. Many people hold down several jobs because one job isn't enough to pay the bills.

[uday]

Great Job SCMP for picking up topics like this... You are one of the gold standard of Journalism ❤

[DubboU]

This is misleading - North America work on average 38 hours a week?? That's completely false. Working less than 40hrs a week is considered a par time job, and part timers don't receive work benefits. You simply cannot sustain a living doing part time. Most families in North America needs 2 full time income to sustain, or a person works a full time job with a part time on the side.

[miaouscleaumonocle]

The problem is business owners wanting to impose their work schedule on employees.
Employees work for a certain amount of time and a fixed salary.
If you want me to invest as many hours as you in the company, give me shares and I will be included in the benefits split. To put it another way: recruit partners and not employees.

[JMJM]

Having worked in a big MNC whose name only has 4 letters, work life balance there is really non existent.

I am expected to work late or attend 10pm calls once every fortnight. Mentor was sending emails at 10.30pm on a Saturday. Requests that come in at 5pm on a Friday must still be attended to. So glad to be out of that hellhole.

[idrathernot_]

Fun fact: the American work week is way more than 38 hours average given how many Americans have to work 2 jobs or side hustle in 'gig' economy jobs