
When Korea imposed a limit on working hours, did it make people happier? - spindritf
http://digest.bps.org.uk/2014/11/when-korea-imposed-limit-on-working.html
======
PhasmaFelis
Before you draw any firm conclusions, be sure to read the details in the last
couple of paragraphs: The subjects' hours were only reduced by about 10%, an
average of five hours a week; many of them were still working 40-50 hours; and
many of them were still expected to get the same amount of work done, forcing
them to take work home with them.

The article author suggests that the Korean laws may not have gone far
_enough._

~~~
jerf
"The article author suggests that the Korean laws may not have gone far
enough."

That's a really scary line of logic though. "We did a thing, and there was no
effect. We propose that to obtain the desired effect we should do _even more_
of the thing that had no effect."

That's undisprovable.

It's possible that doing the thing that produced no results _even harder_
could have some positive effect, but the world is probably even more full of
things that produced no results but if pushed harder will have negative
effects. Part of being a real scientist is acknowledging that this can only be
interpreted as evidence against the idea that forcing shorter work hours will
make people happier, no matter how cognitively or emotionally challenging it
is. That's being a scientist.

(To forstall the two obvious replies: Consider the difference between the
words "evidence" and "proof". And once again, let me underline the scientific
dangers in "We tested for X->Y and found no evidence for it, but we're still
going to assert that X->Y." This logic doesn't just apply to "work hour
reduction", it applies to _all_ null results, of all kinds.)

~~~
eropple
_> It's possible that doing the thing that produced no results even harder
could have some positive effect, but the world is probably even more full of
things that produced no results but if pushed harder will have negative
effects. Part of being a real scientist is acknowledging that this can only be
interpreted as evidence against the idea that forcing shorter work hours will
make people happier, no matter how cognitively or emotionally challenging it
is. That's being a scientist._

Real science, huh? A mild change in X did nothing, so you should assume a
major change in X will do nothing?

Ever looked at a reaction graph?

~~~
josinalvo
If you are testing A vs notA, and you exclude some scenarios in which A is
true (and dont exclude anything else), that is (by definition) evidence for
notA and against A. (at least by a bayesian definition)

Now, might be that the priors for A were very large, and A is still the most
likely hypothesis. But the evidence just received reduced those priors

\-----------------

(I know that the case in point does not fit the rather strict requirements of
the first paragraph. But I think the affirmation "the hypothesis that reducing
the workload improves the life of the worker, while still very likely, is now
a bit less likely" is true in this case.)

(The phrase in " " sounds odd to me. If I knew numbers, it would be much
better to say P(A) was 95% and now is 90%)

------
s3nnyy
Happiness-wise South Korea ranks 41.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report)).

Here in Switzerland (3rd in happiness) it is not unusual that people are
employed only 3-4 days / week and still make enough money to live well. I
don't know of any other country where this is commonplace.

(Full disclosure: If you're from the EU and looking for a tech-job over here,
I'd be happy to help out).

~~~
dirktheman
Same here at the number 4 on the list... I work 4 days a week, my wife works
3. My employer also works 4.

My day off is awesome, and accounts for a lot of my happiness. And the
happiness of my kids, I'm sure!

US may be the leading in economy, but we (Northern and Western Europe) are way
ahead of you guys when it comes to a healthy work-life balance...

~~~
ams6110
Isn't it all very individual though? What if someone derives happiness and
satisfaction from working? Should they be prohibited from working more than a
set number of days/hours per week?

~~~
SonicSoul
I agree. most of my long hours are self imposed. Often time it's fun to finish
things, or take longer to do something in the best way possible (vs rush
through during normal hours), and have a certain number of accomplishments in
a year.

However I understand that other people may feel pressure to do the same even
thought they value family life more. Some employers probably don't do a great
job in encouraging the family life and set out goals that require extra hours
to complete (over 40 hr work week), which is what such a regulation may aim to
alleviate. In practice I think it will cause more harm by dabbling in company
culture.

------
qwerta
I can speek for Greece, where is ban on sunday work. For workers it just means
they have to work unpaid (and undeclared) overtimes.

If you wont to make people happy, just introduce double pay for overtimes and
really enforce it!

~~~
muyuu
If you cannot "really enforce" one policy why do you think you will be able to
"really enforce" the other?

When enforcement doesn't work rules are guidelines.

~~~
qwerta
Some rules "enforce themselfs". Unpaid overtime brings positive motivation for
emplyers to broken. Paid overtime is negative motivations, and people are more
likely to report it and sue due to lost money.

~~~
muyuu
And they don't sue for the free hours worked on Sunday because...?

As I said, you start by creating a culture where rules are enforced, then work
from there.

~~~
qwerta
Nice one :-)

Sunday is free because it is 'overtime'. Workers are paid fixed pay per month.
Suing for Sunday would not bring any extra money to worker.

------
Sumaso
Reading the abstract from the actual paper itself seems to indicate that
people were not more or less satisfied with their jobs after the reduction of
working hours.

"While satisfaction with working hours increased, reductions had no impact on
job and life satisfaction."

It seems people did actually like the reduced number of hours, they didn't say
that they liked their job more, or found more satisfaction in their life. I
feel like for most people a job is something you do to fund the things you
really want to do.

I would love to see what worker satisfaction would be if their income was
fixed, but they could choose whichever job they wanted. (aka. you'll always
get paid the same amount of money regardless of what job you do).

~~~
ekidd
This sounds like it might relate to the "hedonic treadmill":

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill)

 _Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman were among the first to investigate the
hedonic treadmill in their 1978 study, “Lottery Winners and Accident Victims:
Is Happiness Relative?”. Lottery winners and paraplegics were compared to a
control group and as predicted, comparison (with past experiences and current
communities) and habituation (to new circumstances) affected levels of
happiness such that after the initial impact of the extremely positive or
negative events, happiness levels typically went back to the average levels._

If things like winning the lottery or losing a limb tend to have short-term
effects on happiness, then it's not surprising that a ~10% change in working
hours has little effect. Especially if—as another poster mentioned—you just
end up taking the work home.

~~~
dmix
Wow, I wonder what effect this has on politics?

It was noted that the Arab Spring was largely _not_ the result of political
discontent but the fact food prices were becoming very high [0]. It might be
the case that unless the basic livelihood of people is consistently threatened
- such as not being able to eat - that they will always put up with the
political status quo.

As we're seeing now with the non-existent political reaction to mass
surveillance.

[0]
[http://necsi.edu/research/social/foodcrises.html](http://necsi.edu/research/social/foodcrises.html)

~~~
akirarei
For a revolution you need a revolutionary situation in a society, Lenin
described two conditions "The bottoms don't want and the tops cannot live in
the old way".

It is often connected to food or another word necessity's. That was the case
during the "arab spring" and was also the case in 1917 Russia, the main slogan
for the Russian revolution being "bread and peace". The Russian people had
nothing left to lose and the ruling class had nothing left to give(to sustain
their power) thus fulfilling the two conditions.

All you need then is a catalyst. Which in the case of the "arab spring" was
when Mohamed Bouazizi set him self on fire.

When it concerns America and mass-surveillance I would see that as a possible
catalyst that lacked a revolutionary situation.

------
seanstickle
I favor something more like a Results-Only Work Environment
([http://gorowe.com/pages/rowe-standards](http://gorowe.com/pages/rowe-
standards)), where the focus is on the results and not on how many hours are
worked.

Too many companies (even startups) are conservatives and traditionalists in
the sense of thinking that work needs to be done within certain hours and at a
certain place, even when those are not drivers of the results.

I'm hired to deliver certain results, not to work a number of hours. If it
takes me 10 hours or 40 hours to deliver those results, that's up to me, as
long as the deadlines are hit and the deliverables are high-quality. And
there's no reason to be in an office, unless the office is instrumental to
achieving those results.

The focus on how many hours people _should_ work is a fetish that reinforces a
still-dominant 20th century office culture.

~~~
grecy
I agree with you personally, but to play the devil's advocate a little:

> _If it takes me 10 hours or 40 hours to deliver those results, that 's up to
> me, as long as the deadlines are hit and the deliverables are high-quality._

If you are able to consistently deliver the required results in only 10 hours
of "work", it's clear that any organization will slowly ramp up the required
results more and more until you are working 40 hours a week.

How would you agree on results that are "enough for the company" that won't
grow endlessly when they see you're only working 10 hours a week?

~~~
seanstickle
This is a cultural change that the company has to go through.

They're paying me for the results. Not for the hours.

Thinking that they'll "ramp up the required results more and more until you
are working 40 hours a week" means that you're still thinking that you're
paying for hours.

Still, it's the responsibility of all employees to improve the process that
they work in, just as part of the company's continuous improvement. Which
means that more/better results will be delivered over time anyways.

How do you agree on results that are "enough for the company" when you hire a
consultant (assuming they're an intelligent consultant and don't charge by the
hour).

~~~
tankerdude
The queues of things to do is always extremely long.

There are 1000 tickets in your JIRA queue. They then ask you, what can you do
in the 2 week (or 1 week) sprint?

What do you say? Is it the 10 hour or 40 hour timeframe? That happens all the
time in development, and people do a few things. They underestimate a lot or
they write code that is 90%, where when bad things happen, it's ugly to clean
up.

So the results are what you say you can do in your week of work. And of
course, they will put the pressure of "but that's easy." Yada yada.

As a results oriented place, some companies pack in what you think is 80 in
your 40 hour work week (a lot of companies will try to do this). So what
happens then? You switch jobs?

As for improving the process, most engineers don't know exactly how. They
speculate and guess, hoping to hit it right. It's really up to the people
driving it to affect the company culture. Doing it as an individual within an
organization is quite difficult.

That's what I've experienced at certain companies anyways, generally with
management with less experience, tbh.

~~~
seanstickle
Let's be honest. Both a Results-Only Work Environment or a "9-5 in the office"
environment try to pack as much into an employee's schedule as possible.
That's not unique to ROWE.

Some of the answers to your questions are: well, what do you do now, and how
can that be made better? ROWE isn't magic. It's just a recognition that
pretending that you're paying for hours spent in an office is nonsense, and
that we should talk about the work itself rather than the things that don't
have to do with the work.

The old equation (fetishistically held to, even in the face of its absurdity)
of TIME + PRESENCE = RESULTS typically takes the focus of the conversation,
and we end up in conversations about who can work remotely, and how many hours
people should put in, etc. Instead of talking about the stuff we're actually
paid to deliver.

As for not knowing how to improve processes, I don't mean that we should just
say to them "hey, go improve things." It's a crucial management responsibility
to make sure that people know how to do this sort of thing, to teach them how,
and to provide ongoing coaching in doing it.

------
hawkice
I think a helpful lens is to generally worry about what you are funging
against. Time, as a fungible resource, can be allocated to work (generally
done in fixed portions), and the remainder to other activities. In America (I
have no knowledge specific to Korea), a large percentage of those other
activities is "watch television". People self-assess as less happy watching
television than they do while working. So giving out more time may increase
access to things that make people happy (spending time with loved ones) but
also increase time spent on things that make them unhappy. Obviously this is
only part of the story, but looking at replacement activities would be a great
next step.

------
dba7dba
S Korea just a generation ago was a developing world, with a harsh dictator.

Two generations ago, it was really at the rock bottom nation on the globe in
terms of any ranking you can think of (poverty/violence/dictatorship/low-
education/etc). Pick any poor nation in Asia/Africa and it was probably doing
better than S Korea.

Remember these: History of Korean War, there's no much natural resource to
sell off, with 3 powerful nations (who all have either invaded Korea in the
past and view it as a potential target) nearby, with N Korea 30 miles from
Seoul, AND (get this) no escape route over land in case of a military conflict
(S Korea is pretty much an island now and you canNOT walk/drive to flee S
Korea),

they better really really get their house in order to survive.

Younger S Korean sociologists/commentators lament about how the intense
competition is driving people to commit suicides (yes tragic) but they forget
many, many more people died/suffered from poverty/basic-medical-care not that
long ago.

With all these in context, no wonder they work.

Btw, it's really really said for older S Korean that are passing these days.
They really suffered hard lives and just when their older kids/grandkids are
enjoying abundant lives, but they can't really enjoy as much due to age.

------
joshdance
TLDR - No it didn't, they don't know why, it may have improved well-being.

~~~
crpatino
It's not as if they do not have a clue why...

"Why might this be? Rudolf points out previous evidence that in the short
term, capping hours often just means employees have to get the same work done
in a shorter time, which is likely to be stress-inducing."

------
yongjik
"Imposed" should be in gigantic scare quotes.

Many Korean businesses, big and small, routinely make employees work overtime
without payment. Maybe we should ask the question after we do have an enforced
limit.

~~~
OSButler
The stories I've heard from friends & family working and living in Korea
reflect exactly that.

There's not just uncompensated overtime, but you're also expected to join up
when it comes to company retreats. So, not only do you give away 10+ hours
every day to the company, but then you'll also be incorporated over the
weekend, due to some company outing.

I also doubt that any imposed limit would actually be enforced or tolerated by
the employer. The unpaid hours go directly into the prices, so some businesses
wouldn't be able to compete anymore if they suddenly had to pay for that
overtime.

The passion my friends put into their work is admirable and nothing short of
impressive, but I can't help but notice that there's not much time left for
family, or anything else besides work for that matter.

