Japan's sleep hazard
The world's third largest economy is faced with a new health hazard. Sleep deprivation in Japan has been getting worse over the years. Almost half of full-time employees in the country says they don't get enoguh sleep.
Reuters
Death from overwork
Japan has been witnessing cases of 'Karoshi' or death from overwork; where long overtime hours, coupled with gradually decreasing sleep hours are claiming lives of stressed employees.
Reuters
An unforgiving work culture
An unbending work culture that requires extensive overtime work is amounting to increasing number of health issues among employees. “There’s an atmosphere at work that you have to work long hours and you shouldn’t leave the office on time, resulting in a lack of sleep and making it difficult for workers to keep up productivity,” Japanese economist Sakuyama said.
Reuters
Minimum rest hours
To curb the problem, only a handful of companies are taking action. These companies are limiting the number of hours a worker must take off before resuming work. For example, diaper maker Unicharm Corp. has required at least eight hours of time off, and prevents workers from staying later than 10 p.m.
Reuters
Encouraging leisure time
To resolve the problem, the Japanese govt is coming up with new solutions like encouraging more leisure time and setting aside 400 million yen for the next financial year to use as an incentive for medium and small firms to adopt the policy of minimum rest period.
Reuters
Govt subsidy for Japanese companies
A subsidy of up to 500,000 yen will be available per company to help pay the costs, including revising employment rules, training and updating software that manage work data, according to the labor ministry.
Reuters
Sleep deprivation taking a toll on economy
Other than a whole number of factors which are to blame for Japan’s poor productivity per worker, sleep deprivation is costing the country more than its G-7 peers.
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