Asian Scientist (Aug. 22, 2013) – A reduction in working hours does not necessarily mean happier employees, as it might merely be adding stress to their general working environment, according to a study of Korean workers.
To enhance living standards and also reduce the effects of excessively long working hours, South Korea introduced a five-day work week in 2004, making Saturdays official non-working days.
The policy also reduced the official working week from 44 to 40 hours, seeking to improve productivity and lower the high rates of industrial injuries due to overworking.
Now, in a study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, Robert Rudolf of Korea University in Seoul has looked at the impact of this policy and found that shorter working hours may not necessarily improve people’s overall job and life satisfaction.
The study, based on the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study, a national longitudinal survey of urban Korean households conducted between 1998 and 2008, focused on the overall individual and family happiness of married and co-residing couples living with children.
Rudolf found that working wives and mothers are generally more pleased with the shorter work week than their male counterparts. This is because women face higher work-family role conflicts within the traditional Korean society, and thus suffer more from long overtime hours.
Even though full-time workers, and women in particular, are generally thankful that their work week was cut by four hours on average, it has had no significant impact on their overall job and life satisfaction.
According to the survey, this is because much of the positive spin-offs gained from fewer working hours are often offset by rising work intensity demands set by employers, while some firms tend to give less holiday time.
These findings show either that traditional theory is wrong to suggest that longer working hours alone have a negative impact on the personal happiness of employees, or it means that increased work intensity, because of cuts in official working hours, completely offsets any positive effects such a move might have.
“If the latter holds true, it would be naïve to believe that work time reductions alone can increase worker well-being,” warned Rudolf.
The article can be found at: Rudolf (2013) Work Shorter, Be Happier? Longitudinal Evidence From The Korean Five-Day Working Policy.
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Source: Springer; Photo: tanvach/Flickr/CC.
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