Hardworking Taiwanese!

The level of commitment to work among Taiwanese, "the hardest working people in the world," can be seen in part from the examples set by company managers.

Terry Kuo is chairman of the board at Foxconn Group, a company which is now one of the leaders in Taiwan's manufacturing sector, having increased sales by 63 times over in the last ten years. Kuo has described his working life in a book entitled Terry & Foxconn (published by CommonWealth Publishing Group). In the book he says that he does more than a full day's work each day, so that he doesn't even have time to be ill. So instead he gets sick during the Chinese New Year holidays, when he can finally relax a little!

Kuo's attitude that "life is work" is an accurate reflection of the lives of most high-ranking managers in Taiwan.

The cream of Taiwan’s hi-tech workers suffer from terrble stress. Even for this elite group, working hours often stretch from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, or even into the eary hours.

"Heroes die on the battlefield"

Twenty years ago, when Casper Shih, chairman of Global Chinese CEO's Fellowship, led his "automation service team" (the forerunner of the China Productivity Center) back to Taiwan, they were often described by observers as workaholics. Once an American engineer who came to Taiwan to work at the CPC asked Shih what the initials stood for. When Shih replied, "China Productivity Center," the engineer interjected, "No, no! It stands for Crazy People Center!" The visitor found it incredible that the team at the CPC would sometimes stay up all night without sleep to complete an assignment.

Recently, BusinessNEXT reported on "139 Sayings of the Chairman" making the rounds at Foxconn Group. Examples include: "The real heroes are the ones who die on the battlefield, not the ones who show up to collect the medals." "Unless you don't expect the sun to come up again, there's no excuse for not reaching your objective." As the magazine puts it, the management philosophy of Terry Kuo evokes the charismatic leadership of the world-conquering Alexander the Great.

Try on saying 128 of the chairman: "What does growth come from? A broad mind." This aphorism illustrates one of the most common reasons for long working hours in Taiwan's business world. As entrepreneurial vistas have expanded, the business community has spread from Taiwan to mainland China, Southeast Asia, Europe and the United Sates, and entrepreneurs cannot but put their brainpower and physical endurance into keeping up with the 24-hour-a-day global supply chain, making decisions on allocating their global resources night and day.

"Taiwanese entrepreneurs and bosses all have super endurance and super dedication, otherwise we would never have the achievements we have today," says John Wang, acting president of Acer Foundation's Aspire Academy. Citing an example he knows firsthand-Acer founder Stan Shih-Wang says that apart from just seven hours sleep a night, Shih spent all the rest of his time working. "In fact, when he's not working, he feels down."

It is often said that life is like a marathon. However, if you try to run a marathon like a 100-meter sprinter to reach your goals, you will become exhausted very quickly. Many employees are too busy to stop, too baffled by changes in their working world, and too blind to be able to see any direction in their working lives. At this stage, they often don't know which way to turn. Perhaps that is a good time to stop and think before taking the next step.

Another "Taiwan Experience"

Of course, some might well ask: After all, everyone in the four "little tiger" economies in the Asian economic miracle of the 1980s (Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea) is hardworking, so what makes Taiwan so special?

In his book Made by Taiwan: Booming in Information Technology Era, which describes the growth path followed by the semiconductor industry in the Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park, Dr. Chang Chun-yen, president of National Chiao Tung University, writes: "Taiwan's entrepreneurial spirit is the 'motorcycle' spirit." Just as being compact and capable are among the distinguishing characteristics of Taiwan's medium and small enterprises, hi-tech people have also continually competed to take the lead, charging ahead to fill any narrow niches and gaps they may find, all seeking to control their own direction and speed.

In order to retain talented people, and prevent hi-tech professionals from jumping to the highest bidder or starting their own companies, in 1983 high-tech companies in the Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park launched the one and only "staff profit-sharing and stock acquisition system" in all of Asia. Each year the companies award their employees a bonus of shares in the companies, depending upon the profits for the year, so that their hi-tech people gain a vested interest in the future of the firm.

As a result, there is even more motivation for hi-tech people to dedicate themselves unstintingly to their jobs, since company profits increase the value of each employee's shares. With this incentive, it has long been "routine" for employees to voluntarily work until nine or ten at night.

When an entrepreneur's abilities, willpower, and ambition are all expressed through an unreserved "passion" for work, they set an example that affects everyone else, and employees can't help getting "married" to their jobs.

Aphorism 134 of Chairman Kuo goes: "When observing: telescope/magnifying glass/microscope." Absorption with minutiae, and personal leadership of his team at Foxconn in pursuing every last detail, have been at the core of Kuo's abilities.

Nonetheless, "once the boss knows every detail, there is no room in the organization for uncertainty, and less room than ever for employees to screw around. That's why Foxconn gives everyone the impression of running like a Swiss watch," says He Fei-peng, editor-in-chief at Manager Today, giving his analysis of the reasons for Foxconn's success.

Note: Figures adjusted to compensate for different definitions of working hours applied in different countries. source: Council of Labor Affairs art: Lee Su-ling

Caught in the middle

Running a business naturally involves pressure, and middle managers, sandwiched between the big bosses and the workers, are squished all out of shape.

Most managers get promoted because they excel in one particular field or another. Maybe they have a lot of experience, bring in big clients, are really strong in research and development, or are very creative in sales planning. But once they get promoted, their energy goes no longer into "getting things done" but into "getting people to do things." Most of the things they have to handle-deciding core priorities, assigning responsibilities, finding resources, boosting morale, selecting new people, managing interpersonal relations and stressed-out employees, crisis management-have nothing to do with their previous areas of expertise.

Mr. Chang works in a Japanese shipping company. Two years ago he was promoted to head both the sales and personnel departments. Since then, he has spent most of his time taking care of "nonsense and trifles." During performance evaluations at the beginning of the year, a female employee came forward to appeal her evaluation, only to be told by one of her Japanese superiors, "If you give me a kiss, we can add a few points to your score." Outraged at being sexually harassed, the woman came to Mr. Chang. But what could he do? After racking his brain for a few days, he could only tell her that the Japanese managers were rotated every three years, so she should just grit her teeth and bear it for the next couple of years.

Though personnel problems are a hassle, company revenues have increased significantly, with the company moving from number 15 in the transport sector in Taiwan into the top ten. So despite working 14 hours a day, at least he comes away with a sense of accomplishment. It's just that he feels bad that he doesn't spend more time with his parents, wife, and children, as he rarely makes it home for dinner or has any free time to be with them. Sometimes he will get a rare day off, and have everything arranged to do something with his family, when a call will come in from the boss-"come play golf"-and in a flash the day off goes up in smoke.

Annual overtime hours in Singapore,Japan amd Taiwan(unit: jours per year) source: Council of Labor Affairs art: Lee Su-ling

The tides of low-wage labor

An even more important factor that daily increases the pressure on workers in Taiwan is the uncertainty and speed of change in Taiwan's business environment.

According to a job stress survey taken in 2001 by the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health of the Council of Labor Affairs, the percentage of men who personally feel highly stressed by their jobs increased from 7.6% in 1994 to 13.8%; the figure for women more than doubled, from 6.5% to 13.5%. There seems to be a trend that Taiwanese are under increasing work-related stress.

Looking more precisely at the sources of stress in life, at the top of the list was work (39%), followed by finances and economic situation (32%), family (10%), and interpersonal relations (5%). Moreover, over half of employees said that they lacked job security, and a full 65% said that they felt that their job had no future.

"Since the coming of the society of uncertain risk around the world in the 20th century, people have had to wonder, 'When is my job going to disappear?' In the past workers worried most that they might lose their jobs to the people around them. Now they worry that they will lose their jobs to the countries around them," says Hsin Ping-lung, an associate professor in the Graduate Institute of National Development at National Taiwan University, who specializes in labor economics. Since the end of the Cold War, the formerly communist states, including China and countries in Eastern Europe, have embarked on a transformation to a capitalist market economy. When you also figure in the rise of countries like India and Brazil in recent years, there has been a sudden increase of more than 1 billion people in the global labor supply. In addition, as communications technology has advanced and globalization has deepened, bosses can now move their factories to another country at a moment's notice. For workers, as they continue to struggle to stay afloat in a "sea of excess labor," uncertainty will become more and more pronounced.

In recent years there has been a dramatic transformation in the economic structure, and all of the major developments-structural unemployment, outsourcing, international competition, changes in the nature of jobs as a result of new information technology, and a widening of the gap between rich and poor-have without exception been blows to the job security of Taiwan's 6 million workers.

Take for example the trend of big corporate mergers. In 2002, international information giants Hewlett-Packard and Compaq merged, and at the end of last year, Lenovo Group Ltd., the number one name in computers in mainland China, bought IBM's personal computer division. The more orders a buyer commands, the better its negotiating position with suppliers, and there has been a definite and immediate impact on the profit margins of Taiwan's OEM tech firms. OEM manufacturers may themselves be forced to follow the merger and acquisition trend in order to resist the collective pressure of the major international giants, but of course any M&A means sweeping reductions in the number of employees, so once again the wage-earner and the "salaryman" will be hurt the most.

Besides intensified international competition, the gun has also sounded in the elimination heats for the domestic electronics industry. Last year, financial problems struck one major firm after another, including Procomp Informatics, Summit Technology, and Unicap Electronics Industrial. Each and every "detonation" not only meant that investors' money disappeared without a trace, but also shattered confidence in job security in the industry.

Even as profit margins for hi-tech OEMs drop from the "guaranteed five" down toward the bottom line, the financial industry-which in recent years has accounted for a huge number of new jobs in the employment market-has also been hit. As the government has announced that the number of financial holding companies will be reduced from 14 to seven, and the number of state-run banks cut in half, waves of personnel shifts have pushed even more people into bitter struggles to protect their jobs.

Looking at job market information, this could be yet another "employment reorganization year." Job security disappears, salary guarantees are eliminated, steady full-time jobs are replaced, there is little prospect of profit sharing, and even the government will be smashing a lot of "iron rice bowls" with the passage of the recent Executive Yuan Organization Standards Act, which will reduce the number of government agencies.

Employers use both "sticks" and "carrots" to encourage (or force) their employees to work hard with financial incentives. The photo shows the lavish dinner party of the Foxconn Group a few days before Chinese New Year. (courtesy of Business Weekly)

Disappearing, or moving away?

Full time jobs are increasingly at risk. They are being replaced by the increasingly common phenomena of contract labor, outsourcing, and other "flexible employment" relationships. Management scholars overseas have characterized this relationship as "shamrock" organization. Just as the three leaves of the shamrock are all of different shapes, a company will likewise have various forms of hiring: full-time, temps, contracts, outsourcing....

Although corporate employees worry that their jobs are becoming unsafe, temp agencies are correspondingly providing new job opportunities. So it may be that jobs are not disappearing so much as "relocating."

The outsourcing and temping trend has already swept through Taiwan, and the scale of it is far beyond what most people think. From cleaners and security guards in the early days to things like software design and graphic design today, in the future there will be almost no place where you won't find outsourcing.

From the point of view of corporate costs, says Rocky Young, general manager of 104.com.tw, corporations pay 2.5 to three times as much for a full-time employee as for an outsourced worker. Non-core jobs with clear and simple processes, such as typist, phone receptionist, administrative assistant, or bookkeeper-for which salaries will increase with years of service-are all being outsourced. It's only the jobs that require creative thinking (like sales, marketing, management, high-level R&D) that are central to any company.

"The changes in corporate operations are happening very quickly. It used to be that you had to think about restructuring or transforming about every five to seven years. Now you might have to give up an old line of business and start something new every three years," states John Wang. In the past, companies could afford greater tolerance with regard to staffing, and it didn't matter so much if people learned slowly. Now, when everything goes ten times faster, everybody has to be versatile. This is most obvious in the insurance industry. Since the law was changed in Taiwan to allow the creation of financial holding companies, insurance people are unlikely to survive for long if they don't also have licenses for money management or investment advice.

These gleaming glass towers look very modern and quite spectacular, yet inside the building, there's a harsh competitive corporate jungle. In order to reach their goals and make a decent living, Taiwanese work so much overtime, either willingly or unwillingly, that Taiwan has some of the longest working hours per capita in the world.

The working hours war

With the clouds of difficulty in finding jobs still lingering, plus the intangible pressure of competition within the workplace, office workers are staying in the office later and later.

In fact, working long hours is already a shared situation worldwide. In Japan, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labor has issued repeated directives regarding overwork. Some corporations, worried about leaving a paper trail of illegal overtime, figure out ways to remove punch clocks, lock their doors, and turn off their lights, while still keeping workers secretly working overtime. Others directly ask their employees to take work home with them. The average American works nearly 1800 hours a year, 200 hours more than in Germany. And even "after work," modern technologies like e-mail and cell phones are like invisible chains preventing employees from ever being out of reach of the boss's demands.

"Reasonable working hours" is one of the factors used in all countries to evaluate labor conditions. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, the war between labor and capital over working hours has been never-ending.

The International Labor Organization, founded in the early 20th century, has issued most of its bylaws and recommendations on the topic of working hours. Its rules call for a maximum of eight hours a day and 48 hours a week, at least one continuous 24-hour rest period per seven working days, and a prohibition on night work by anyone under 18. In 1975, the EU debated the idea of a 40-week working year as the standard that advanced countries should aspire to. But, facing strong opposition from business, few developed countries signed up.

Although many people believe that European countries generally have shorter working hours, Hsin Ping-lung reminds us, "You have to be very careful in the international comparison of working hours. In Germany and France, labor-management negotiations reduced legally mandated working hours, but afterwards workers discovered that less hours meant less income, so many began looking for second jobs to make ends meet. With the two jobs added together, these people ended up working even more hours than they did before." Moreover, in mainland China, the two-day weekend was implemented only to create more job opportunities, so that now six people would be required to do the work of five.

Annual overtime hours in Singapore,Japan amd Taiwan(unit: jours per year) source: Council of Labor Affairs art: Lee Su-ling

Winner at work, loser in life

What makes one feel most at a loss is that there is virtually no turning back from the globalized economic structure that is generating these long working hours. And with the loosening of family structures, political disillusionment, and cultural vulgarization, people are turning more and more to their jobs to find meaning in life and a sense of belonging in some group.

"Entrepreneurs don't 'marry' their jobs, they are born to work. They have a high need for accomplishment. So as long as the business keeps running, it is like they are on a treadmill, and will never stop," says psychiatrist Wang Hao-wei, who has seen many high-tech people burying their head in their work. Entrepreneurs are not like non-management people, who are compelled to work. They often work excessive hours on their own initiative, and even fill their entire schedule with work to avoid anxiety and uncertainty. Of these, there are many who say they do it for their families, but in fact are completely ignoring their families, and their extreme dedication to work becomes the way they express their love for their families. Once they leave work, however, as a result of unemployment or retirement, they suffer: the rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are three times higher for men than for women.

"Work is a bottomless pit; it can never be finished," says Taichung mayor Jason Hu, whose body informed him a year ago-by virtue of a mild stroke-that all of his flying back and forth to the US and excessive work on behalf of the proposed new Guggenheim museum in Taichung was simply too much to bear.

However, it is still too early to tell whether overwork in Taiwan is a problem worth worrying about. Whether long hours will really kill depends, many people think, on the cognitive component. And social status is one factor that will influence cognitive understanding.

If you are talking about a company founder or boss-one of those people who control the very fate of the firm-such individuals can set their own schedules, and most of the profits go into their pockets. Given the sense of accomplishment and material rewards they get, not only are they happy to work "too much," they will encourage or even require their employees to follow suit.

But if you are talking about an ordinary employee with no grand ambitions, they don't get much satisfaction out of their jobs, and long working hours are begrudged, and only reflect the fear of losing their jobs.

"Taiwanese ideas about the value of work pretty much stop at 'diligence is true virtue.' But what if you ask, do Taiwanese like working? The answer would be in the negative," Rocky Young points out. Taiwan's job market shows two "70" phenomena: 70% of employers do not admire their employees, and 70% of employees do not admire their employers. The two sides are like reluctant lovers, neither committing to the other, failing to see eye to eye. Only 30% of working people have jobs they voluntarily devote themselves to. Naturally, since most people already dislike their jobs, longer working hours make them feel even more unhappy and ill fated.

Moreover, 104.com.tw continually has a list of 500 or more jobs with annual salaries of NT$2 million or more-very, very high for Taiwan. You would think that lots of people would be competing for jobs like these, right? But, relates Rocky Young, they can only find suitable people for about 30% of them. This shows that there is in fact a severe shortage of people in Taiwan willing and able to take on high-level, high-challenge jobs. And many bosses are not satisfied with the quality of high-level people in Taiwan.

Annual overtime hours in Singapore,Japan amd Taiwan(unit: jours per year) source: Council of Labor Affairs art: Lee Su-ling

The loyalty profession

In a digital era in which technological change advances at an ever-increasing pace, "forever" is a thing of the past. The only thing that doesn't change is change itself. Job market experts continually warn that today, as the lifetime employment system is disintegrating, a worker's loyalty should go not to her boss, but to her skills. Workers should treat each job as if they were "self-employed." The problem is, when one job is so exhausting, where can one find the time to make contacts and learn new skills?

If you work "crazily" right to the end, but still can't keep your job, perhaps you have been-to borrow the terminology of the American clinical psychologist Ilene Philipson, as used in her book Married to the Job-"betrayed by your job." You complain that you let your job eat into your health, your family life, and even corporate productivity! Or perhaps we should give an ear to the advice of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Lester Thurow: The name of the economic game is "work." In this new era of intense global competition, this game has been pushed to a final do-or-die battle, whether we like it or not. Before the country, society, and business, and individual all spin out of control, who will first stop in their tracks and think about their next move? After all, if the result of economic development is that most people feel overworked, and end up feeling as if they have no security and can trust nothing, what's the point of this kind of development?