Studies show people who work less are more likely to get a raise or bonus than those who overwork. Mark Johanson reports on the downside of long working hours

研究显示工作时长较少的人更容易获得加薪或奖励。Mark Johanson报道了工作时长的降低趋势。

By Mark Johanson

13 January 2017

When Stuart Nomimizu relocated from Birmingham, England, to Tokyo his friends and family in the UK started to worry. Not only did they rarely hear from him, but he seemed to always be at the office from early morning until very late at night. His working hours seemed so extreme, that they didn’t always believe he was working as hard as he said.

Stuart Nomimizu从英国伯明翰搬到了日本东京，他英国的朋友和家人很担忧。不仅仅是因为他们很少收到他的来信，而且他似乎总是在办公室，从很早待到很晚。他的工作时间似乎太过于苛刻，以至于他们并不总是相信他如他说的一样努力工作。

To convince them, he documented one week of his life as a so-called “salaryman” in Tokyo’s financial-services industry and posted it online so they could understand his new lifestyle.

为了让英国的朋友和家人信服，他记录了他作为东京金融服务业一名工薪族的一周的生活，并上传到网上来让朋友和家人了解他的新的生活方式。

Marathon workdays are so entrenched in Japanese culture that  here’s even a word, karoshi, that quite literally means “overwork death” (Credit: Alamy)

马拉松式的工作日在日本文化中是根深蒂固的，以至于专门有一个词语karoshi，字面意思是过劳死。

Theresulting videowent viral on YouTube, racking up more than one million views. It depicts a hectic week in 2015 during the financial sector’s busy season — from January to March — when Nomimizu clocked in 78 working hours and 35 sleeping hours between Monday and Saturday (before working another six hours that Sunday, which you don’t see in the video).

视频在YouTube上疯狂传播，点击量超过百万。它记录了在金融业繁忙的季度-一月到三月--忙碌的一周，Nomimizu在周一到周六间工作长达78小时，睡眠仅仅35小时（而周日还需要工作六小时，这在视频中没有记录到）。

Marathon workdays are so entrenched in the Japanese culture that there’s even a word, karoshi, that quite literally means ‘overwork death’

It got to the point where Nomimizu was putting in so many 80-hour work weeks that he fainted in his apartment one night andcame-to right next to a TV stand, which he’d narrowly missed.When the rush period was finally over, he says the entire office got “horrendously sick.”

正是由于Nomimizu工作时间多达80小时，导致他在一天晚上晕倒在公寓中；去电视台，但是错过了。当这段忙碌的时期终于结束时，他说整个办公室都得了“很可怕的病”。

While Nomimizu’s excessive workload was somewhat temporary, he says “there are people working for companies in Tokyo that do that sort of workload and have that life day-in, day-out all year long.” Indeed, marathon workdays are so entrenched in the culture that there’s even a Japanese word,karoshi, that quite literally means “overwork death.”

尽管Nomimizu的过度工作在一定程度上是暂时的，他说“在东京，公司里的人常年承受这种程度的工作量。” 事实上，马拉松式的工作在日本文化中是非常根深蒂固的，日语中甚至还有“karoshi”一次用来描述过劳死。

It got to the point where Stuart Nomimizu (left) was working so many 80-hour work weeks in Tokyo that he fainted (Credit: Stuart Nomimizu)

The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare released the government’s firstreporton karoshi this October, and it found that nearly one in four (23%) companies have some employees who work more than 80 hours of overtime per month.

日本卫生、劳工与福利部门在今年十月公布了第一次关于过劳死的政府报告，报告指出只有23%的公司中有雇员每月工作时长超过80小时。

If you’re the first person to leave, you won’t be viewed as a team player

“The Japanese have a very high sense of respect for their fellow colleagues, but there is also an inability to speak one’s mind,” Nomimizu says. “So you have a lot of people at a lower level who will stay in the office until their manager leaves at a ridiculously late hour.” The 26-year-old explains that if you’re the first person to leave, you won’t be viewed as a team player.

“日本人对于他们的同事有着极高的尊敬，但是个人是不能讲出自己的想法。” Nomimizu说。“所以很多职位低的人会在办公室待到非常晚，直到他们的经理离开。” 26岁的Nomimizu解释说如果你是第一个离开的人，你将不会被视为团队中的一员。

Nearly one in four Japanese companies have some employees who work more than 80 hours of overtime per month (Credit: Getty Images)

Are the long-working Japanese any more productive than their global counterparts? Nomimizu doesn’t think so. Indeed, there’s a growing body of evidence to suggest that working longer hours is not only bad for our health, but also detrimental for our careers and poor for a company’s overall productivity.

工作时间更长的日本人会比他们的同仁更多产吗？Nomimizu并不认为如此。事实上，越来越多的证据显示工作更长的时间不仅仅对我们的健康有害，而且对我们的事业不利，对公司整体的产值也无益。

When less is more

If there’s another country that’s notorious for its long work hours and lack of time off, it’s the United States. A recentGallup pollfound that the average full-time employee in the US works a 47-hour week, nearly a full workday longer than the standard nine-to-five schedule. Moreover, nearly one in five workers (18%) reports working 60 hours or more per week.

如果还有另一个国家因其较长的工作时间及缺乏休息时间而臭名昭著的话，那就是美国。最近的盖洛普民意调查发现在美国全职雇员的平均工作时长每周47小时，比标准的朝九晚五多了将近整整一个工作日。而且，接近五分之一（18%）的工人工作时间在每周60小时或更多。

People who take more time off — 11 days or more — are more likely to get a raise or bonus than people who take 10 or fewer days

Despite sacrificing time off with family and friends to toil away in the office, a separate report from the US-based campaign Project: Time Off discovered that long-working office martyrs were less likely than their peers to have received a bonus in the last three years.

尽管牺牲了与家人、朋友在一起的时间而在办公室里辛苦工作，以美国为调查基础的竞选项目Time Off中一项独立的报告指出：在最近的三年内，长时间工作的办公室烈士相比他们的同龄人得到奖励的可能更小。

Japanese workers have a very high sense of respect for their colleagues. If you’re always first to leave, you're unlikely to be viewed as a team player (Credit: Getty Images)

“We actually find that people who takemoretime off — 11 days or more — are more likely to get a raise or bonus than people who take 10 or fewer days,” says Katie Denis, lead researcher at Project: Time Off. “So if you’re not getting ahead — and we find no correlation between hours worked and getting ahead — then what are you doing it for?”

“我们的确发现花费11天甚至更多时间去休息的人比只休息10天或更少的人更易于得到晋升或奖励”，Time Off项目的首席调查员，Katie Denis说。“所以如果你不是领头人--我们也发现工作时间和领导地位之间并没有联系----那么你做它是为了什么呢？”

Diminishing returns

Laura Vanderkam, time management expert and author of 168 Hours, notes that, “your brain, like anything, can’t run on unlimited.” In fact, it’s actually bad for us to push beyond our limits. “As we work past a point of diminishing returns we wind up making mistakes,” she says. “We also don’t bring our best ideas and energy to the problems we’re trying to solve.”

Laura Vanderkam，时间管理专家，同时是《168小时》的作者，注意到，“你的大脑就像任何事物一样，是不能无限制地运转的。” 事实上，超过我们的极限运转对于我们是非常糟糕的。“一旦我们工作时长超过收益递减的临界点，我们就容易犯错误，” 她说。“同时，我们拿不出最好的想法和精力来解决问题。”

People who take 11 days or more off are more likely to get a raise or bonus than people who take 10 or fewer days as holiday (Credit: Alamy)

There are several remedies to overworking. For instance, many of us believe we need to be in the office both when our boss shows up and when he or she leaves. However, Vanderkam thinks that’s a big (and often misguided) assumption. “Maybe your boss wants the place to herself in the morning and she’s actually annoyed that you’re getting there early, too.”

这里有几种针对工作时间过长的纠正方法。比如，我们很多人都认为当我们的老板出现和他或她离开的时候，我们都需要在办公室。然而，Vanderkam认为这是一个错误的假设。“可能清晨，你的老板就想一个人待着而且她确实也为你早早地到办公室而烦恼”

Vanderkam also thinks a lot of people aren’t willing to consciously build breaks into their daily schedule out of fear they won’t be seen as hard workers. “So we sabotage our own productivity by saying ‘I’m just going to work all day, have my lunch at my desk, and fall into the 2:30 pm rabbit hole of the internet’,” she explains.

Vanderkam认为很多人由于害怕不能被认为是勤劳的员工，而不愿意在他们的日程里安排休息。“所以通过自我标榜“我将要忙碌一整天，只能在办公桌上吃午饭，掉进网络上下午2：30的兔子洞里”，我们会降低工作效率。”

A silver lining

While trading rest for unpaid overtime is clearly a bad deal for employees, it’s actually pretty lousy for employers, too. A Stanford University study found that employee output declines sharply after 50 hours per week and nosedives after 56 hours to the point where someone who puts in 70 hours doesn’t produce anything more with those additional 14 hours. Similar studies have linked long hours with absenteeism, long-term memory loss and impaired decision-making skills.

虽然休息时间被用来没有薪酬的过度工作对于雇员来说明显是一笔糟糕的交易，但是对于雇主来说实际上也是相当糟糕的。一项斯坦福大学的研究表明每周工作50小时会使雇员的产出锐减，当工作时长达到56小时使雇员的产出暴跌，当时长达到70小时，其产出与时长为56小时完全一样，增加的14小时完全没有增加生产。类似的研究也显示了工作时长与旷工、长期记忆的丧失和决策机能的损害有关联。

So what are companies doing to combat the inevitable burnout? Major Japanese corporations have actually taken a lead on the issue. Toyota now limits overtime to 360 hours a year (or an average of 30 hours monthly), while ad agency Dentsu just released an eight-point plan (including regular vacation encouragement and lights out at the office by 22:00) to improve its work environment after the high-profile suicide of one of its employees.

那么公司都做了什么来防止这种不可避免的精力耗竭？大多数的日本企业率先采取措施解决这个问题。Toyota限制了一年的加班不能超过360小时（每月不能超过30小时），与此同时由于一个雇员的自杀而备受关注的广告代理Dentsu刚刚发布了一个八项计划（包括常规的假期奖励机制和办公室11点熄灯机制）来改善它的工作环境。

In Germany, meanwhile, major companies like BMW and Volkswagen have limited after-hours employee emails to combat a growing culture of hyper-connectivity. In the US, leading investment banks like Credit Suisse and JPMorgan Chase have issued new guidelines to discourage analysts and associates (particularly the lower-ranking millennial workers) from coming to the office on weekends.

在德国，大公司如BMW 和Volkswagen限制下班后给雇员发邮件来抵抗日益增加的高度联结的文化。在美国，领先的投资银行像Credit Suisse和JPMorgan Chase发布了新的指南来劝阻分析师和助理（特别是低排位的千禧一代的职员）周末来办公室。

Vanderkam notes that when you run a machine without maintenance you run a high risk of it breaking down over time, and possibly at an incredibly inopportune moment. It seems many companies have started to realise that the same is true of humans, too.

Vanderkam指出当你只运转一个机器而不进行保养，它会因为过度使用而坏掉，而且可能在一个不合适的时间点坏掉。很多公司似乎也开始意思到人也类似。