Study: HK employees work longer, but waste time online

We’ve always heard that Hong Kong people spend too much time at work, often due to demanding bosses, unrealistic deadlines and understaffed departments. But what about extended sessions of unproductive web surfing? Add that as a possible reason.

Community Business, a non-profit group, conducted a survey and revealed that more than half of  the 1,003 full-time employees interviewed suffer from work overload. As a result of the unwanted burden, 43.4 per cent admitted to making mistakes they could have easily avoided. With extended time at work, close to three of 10 feel they were less efficient in their tasks. To reduce stress, one out of three said they surf the web or visit social media websites instead of taking a break from their desks to catch fresh air or rest their minds.

A common complaint among staff is that bosses were often concerned only at maximizing profits and generally disregard employee well-being. Maybe bosses themselves feel the same way about meeting the sky-high expectations of stakeholders and company owners. Far from the fact that they are immune to the layoff axe, CEOs can get fired for various reasons. But with generous pay and equally generous severance packages, top executives don’t get as much sympathy as the low-tier employees.

Unhappy employees consider resigning from work (28%) to change jobs or enjoy a career break, leaving Hong Kong for good (19.7%), giving up career advancement (18.5%) or accepting lower salary to improve work-life balance. But when asked about work-life balance on a scale of 1 to 10, the feedback average of 6.17 was better than between 5.6 and 5.7 recorded in the past five years.

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