Headline:
Work is killer
Standfirst:
Work should be balanced with life. Find the right mix this year with Victor Koh, a trainer and worklife strategy consultant from Brainergy Internationa,l and HPB’s tips for leading a balanced life.
Copy:
This just in: on Friday, November 30, 2007, Japan Today reported that a “threejudge panel found that Kenichi Uchino died Feb 9, 2002, at age 30 after working about 106 hours of overtime in one month until the day before his death.” Chilling words to read at the start of a new year. But oh, it happens. So often, that the Japanese even have a word for it "karoshi”. Karoshi usually refers to acute heart failure following high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, or a cerebral haemorrhage, and investigations revealed that Kenichi had indeed “died of heart failure.” The Defence Council for Victims of Karoshi (yes, there’s one in Japan, because ‘karoshi’ is not recognised under insurance schemes) found that karoshi usually seems to occur in workplaces which exhibit two factors: strenuous mental effort, and endless deadlines. Stress too, is built up when employees work independently, and to their own initiative, without any assistance from colleagues. As we look ahead, and our economy (and living standards) begins to approach Japan’s, karoshi should give us some pause for thought. Can we continue to spend more time, or even as much time, as we did last year at work? Is increasing overtime, like burgeoning prices and inflation, an inescapable fact of life?
Achieving worklife balance According to the Happy Planet Index compiled by the British thinktank New Economics Foundation, amongst Asian nations, Vietnam came in highest at number 12 amongst 178 countries, and Singapore was ranked lowest at 131.