Week 4/5: Competitive Content

I have chosen Creative Conscience (Live) brief because I feel it is more closely linked to project ideas I have considered in the previous project. It suggests the topic 'overworking', so I could continue researching different working cultures. Or I could expand one of the chapter titles (from my previous project) into an 8 week project: Wake up before the city; Retreat to nature; Go at your own pace; Take part; Travel by bike; Create a healthy living space; Prioritise movement first thing; Take pauses; Call Home.

Overworking

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Labour Organisation found that 745,000 people died in 2016 from stroke and ischemic heart disease as a direct result of having worked at least 55 hours a week. In Japan, the word 'karoshi' means death by overwork.
Premium Friday is where people can leave work early at the last Friday of each month. It was developed in Japan to prevent burnout.
996 in China means working 9am until 9pm, 6 days a week. Factors that motivate this way of living include high salaries, social status and being a normality in society to work those types of hours.
Top most overworked city is Dubai, UAE, whilst places like Oslo, Norway & Bern, Switzerland are ranked the best work-life balance.
Japan has the longest working hours - 46% of 500 business workers within Tokyo's top companies feared that they would become karoshi victims.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2022/10/07/10-signs-you-could-be-working-yourself-to-death-in-a-hybrid-world/
Are you burnt-out or burning out? Long term effects = medical attention. Human energy is like trees, don't take more than you can replenish. Should it be workplace safety regulation? Create a safety kit for burnout - caution floor signs, first aid box, heart defibulater. Design a workplace survey / risk assessment sheet.

Chapter titles from previous project

Wake up before the city
Retreat to nature
Go at your own pace
Take part
Travel by bike
Create a healthy living space
Prioritise movement first thing
Take pauses
Call Home

Feedback has suggested that the route I was planning on taking at the start of the course (overworking) would be a more interesting one. And there is so much content about overworking in our post-pandemic society. I am leaning towards burnout effects. I do need to refine this concept into a specific audience, culture and industry.

I do love this project, which was shared on the ideas wall; it gives me a good idea of what to look for when researching projects of my own.

British demographics and stress

So in an attempt to refine my open brief for creative Conscience, Ive started asking the question on how overworking could happen and collected a few potential themes:

1. Mark of success/ glorification/status of working longer hours

2. Recovery - Japan's government in 1950s wanted a quick rebuild after WW2 and asked citizens to work longer hours

3. The system rewards you for working longer not smarter

4. Job security- high unemployment rates during the pandemic - companies demanded value for money.

5. The need to secure future income (pay off student debts, mortgages, pensions, etc),

6. imposter syndrome

7. Inflation - minimum wage in the UK (£9.50) is lower than national living wage (£10.90)

Another thought Ive had relates to how working culture has made it impossible to be aware of the political world around us. What if there was a system that could do everything in one (inspired by circle) - its difficult to change a whole work culture. Our to-do lists pile up in our personal lives and follow us in work, making us overwhelmed: We work 5 days a week, relax or socialise 1 day and 1 day to shop, clean and cook.

CV-Library, the UK’s leading independent job board, one in three (35.2%) Brits who consider themselves ‘successful’ wake up at 5.30am, with a further 37.4% stating that they get just 6.5 hours sleep a night

History of Overworking

Work strikes convinced government to implement safety regulations in work,
1855 UK labour campaign for a 8 hour work day. Wasn't achieved until 1919.
1856 Australian building workers win an 8-hour day movement.
Industrial revolution=overwork. Mary Anne Walkley died 1863 of overworking - 20 years old. 16 hours worked without break.

Japan - Death by Work

They don't use all their holiday because ' the atmosphere in the workplace wouldn't allow it'. Couldn't we design a workplace?

Japanese Labor Law requires people to work 8 hours a day (it's a global law), 40 hours a week maximum. But despite the law, companies demand more hours from employees due to high industrial demand.

Employees wait for their boss to leave work first out of politeness.

Population decreases from pandemic cause concern over the working population - could this put more strain on them? A campaign to make bosses care about their remaining workers.

Countries like Germany, Norway, Sweden and France are proving that you don’t have to work eight hour days or more to be productive. Happiness expert Dan Buettner takes it even a step further. Buettner has reviewed the research on more than 20 million people worldwide through the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index, and has conducted extensive on-the-ground research in the world’s happiest countries. “When it comes to your work, try to work part-time, 30–35 hours a week on average,” he says.

People in Denmark work hard and are just as productive as other workers, but rarely put in more than 37 hours a week, often leaving the office by 4 or 5 PM each day. Other Scandinavian countries enjoy a similar work-life balance and similar happiness rankings.

Losing a job can result in a strong feeling of dishonor towards the company, which in-turn makes Japanese employees do anything they can to please their bosses. Following this idea of companies expecting more value for their money and fear of job security.

Since 2016, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has produced a white paper on measures to prevent death by overwork annually, investigating and reporting the actual conditions of overwork deaths, long working hours, and workplace stress.

November to be a karoushi awareness month

Documentary:

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/05/29/why-does-japan-work-so-hard.html

Reviews from Japanese

At the current private school I’m working at, I typically work 12- to 13-hour days, 6 days a week. About 72 to 78 hours a week - and I’m glad it’s not more. Officially my weekly hours are 42.5.

At my last workplace, I was typically working 80+ hour weeks and wishing to die. My day would start at 8AM and often I wouldn’t get home till close to midnight. Once a week my body would “crash” for 13 hours straight when I finally could let it sleep. I got really sick for 5 weeks during my first year there and lost about 7kg, during which I was still turning up to work.

In the education sector, the more you work the more work they give you. And at all the schools I’ve worked at, all overtime hours are construed as “voluntary overtime”. Yes, I’m working “voluntarily” because I like to imagine what living as a slave would feel like. *sarcasm*

This is not a reality only for the Japanese living here. It’s the reality for many, many people living here.

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During my early days in Japan I was working in a typical Japanese company. One fine day I had some more work left to finish at the end of the day and told my boss that I’m going to be working over-time for a bit. At first he was happy to see his sub-ordinate working so hard . The work took usual than longer so it went past 9:00 PM and my boss was ready to leave and told me strictly to not work beyond 11:00 PM. When I asked why, he said some 3–5 years ago an employee worked until next morning 5 AM something without taking any break and died of exhaustion due to which the company got into serious trouble and had to re-write the working hour rules.

And since then if any employee works beyond 11 PM unless until it’s absolutely necessary and with prior approval of his supervisor , the supervisor will be demoted . And I actually saw someone getting demoted from 副統括　( Deputy Division Head) to Manager because his sub-ordinate worked until 11:30 PM something. In fact in some departments the managers used to leave only when all his sub-ordinates left due to fear of demotion.

Unfortunately, in typical Japanese companies it’s more quantity based reward than quality. The employee who has been clocking 12 hours or more a day is preferred more over a employee who works till regular working time for a promotion even when the latter does a better job. I can’t remember how many times I got the weird stare from Japanese colleagues for leaving at 17:35 (work timing was 9:00 - 17:30). According to them it’s very natural to do overtime every day. Lucky me , I always used the gaijin card (foreigner card) and got out with no hesitation.

In my opinion it’s not exaggerated at all and there’s a reason why there is a special term for them called SALARYMAN.

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Ideas - Overwork

Take all your holiday (Japan) - workers taking only 52.4% of the paid leave. Taking a day off is frowned upon even for a vacation.
A campaign for 6 hours a day (like Germany)
Should it be workplace safety regulation? Create a safety kit for burnout - caution floor signs, first aid box, heart defibulater.
Office posters

Workshop

Miyata Jiro By Momoyo Torimitsu

Momoyo Torimitsu is a multi-media artist known for her interpretations of corporate culture and media stereotypes.

Her best known project is a series of crawling middleaged salarymen named ‘Miyata Jiro’ (1995), which reflects how Japan’s economic growth has transformed the business culture in the 90’s (still relevant today). In each performance, the artist dresses up as a dutiful nurse who redirects the robot when approaching obsticles and changing his batteries. The frequently reported news of salarymen deaths from overwork (karoshi) made this work poignantly relevant in the late 1990s.

Her performance in Tokyo triggered a variety of different reactions, ranging from smiles and amusement to worries from people who took him for a real person and even anger. These performances drew large crowds and major press coverage, inspiring Torimitsu to go on a world tour with the robot, such as the streets in New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro.

She recieved a scholarship from the Asian Cultural Council, Torimitsu participated in the P.S.1 International Studio Program and staged the crawl of Miyata Jiro on Wall Street and near Rockefeller Center. And these performances were documented and presented in an exhibition. provoked a variety of different reactions.

Reflection

I found it interesting how Japanese culture is still having trouble with overworking despite having a law in place. Even though there is some acknowledgement on the employer's part regarding insurance as the aftermath to karoshi, office workers still follow a group/societial attitude towards someone that leaves on time because Japanese are known for working as a team - if you fall behind then that slows down the rest of the team. I think I need to think about how to convince management to allow my final solution into their office workplace.

Feedback

Flora Hands -

I think this is a really interesting project idea especially baring in mind the cultural values of dedication and devotion that underpin why the Japanese 'salarymen' feel they need to work that many hours. It could be a really interesting piece of communication to encourage new thinking around these values, to open the possibility that dedication and devotion to your work can be demonstrated in other ways.