I got an unofficial offer and the job is under 裁量労働制 (discretionary labor system). I’ve heard of fixed or flexed time systems but I don’t know much about this. Am I screwed? Is it just a name for doing overtime without getting paid?
My company has a discretionary labor system for engineers. I start work around 7am every day and end between 4-5pm, unless I’ve got something important to deal with beyond that.
I think it really depends on your company, but I’d imagine the culture you’re hiring into would come out in the interview process.
Nothing good or bad about it inherently. Just depends on the company and your own skills. I’m on a similar system (管理監督労働者) and completely manage my own hours. During slow periods, like this entire summer basically, I sometimes work as little as 1 or 2 hours a day. I can also work at home or go into office however I want. Nobody else is allowed to manage my hours or schedule.
You need more information on how your team/company runs.
Been under this system for almost a decade. As others have said, it’s all up to your workplace’s culture. In principle, you should be able to decide exactly how long you need to work in order to finish tasks and meet deadlines. Some days are slow, some days are tough. Days when I need to pull an all-nighter (not so often these days) were usually my fault for procrastinating in the first place. Nobody dictates my schedule other than the mutually agreed upon deadlines and targets.
You could look at it as an evil system for having you do unpaid overtime without getting paid, or you could look at it as a system that lets you work the hours you need without having to worry about always getting approval, etc.
I would ask your work places expectation, in terms of core hours – in other words when there is a lot of work to do, of course you might have to do overtime, but when you don’t have work, are you expected to be in the office for 8 hours and “find something to do”? Or maybe not so much.
Anyway, good or bad, it’s a very common system, so using this alone isn’t cause for concern.
If they are constantly giving you 80 hours of work every week year round, that is a concern no matter the system.
If you are working mostly by yourself, without someone else micromanaging you, it’s a great system. I arrive at work any time, leave any time, if I need to run some errand in the middle of the day I just go and come back, and nobody cares what I’m going. But of course I may be called at work at any time if there are urgent issues, or have to work on weekends or 2am online meetings on other time zones.
But for 90% of my colleagues who are not so lucky with their bosses, discretionary labor system means they work every day from 8:30 to 19:30, half of the Saturdays, many holidays, and don’t get paid overtime for any of it.
I work under that system and it pretty much means that my work day can last anywhere from 1minute to the full 24hours. I don’t get paid for overtime since I don’t officially have a set hours of work per day and thus also don’t have an hourly pay.
On average, I work 4-5 hours a day on regular days but a few weeks per year I have to work 10-12hours a day (considering I work from home, those busy days are still less time than when I commuted, tho).
This system is perfect for me as a team leader since most of the time, there is simply not enough work to stay busy 8 hours but twice a year, I have to do the evaluations of my team members and it gets super busy for a few weeks.
It also allows me to easily book dentist/doctor/hair dresser appointments during the day rather than doing it after 7pm when it gets busy.
Overall a great system but I recon that some companies may abuse it to make you work more than 8hours every day without extra pay.
I am working in a research institute and under discretionary system. For us researcher this feels kind of natural and basically things usually go by our own pace.
There is essentially no constraints as to when and where I work except when there is a scheduled meeting or I have to work with others in a laboratory.
But I must say our case is kind of special and probably very different from other jobs. In a sense, no one cares if we worked very short hours or not, as long as we have results. The otherwise obviously applies.
It’s a good thing IMO, but the key point is that it caps your overtime to x hours per week or month (will be written in your contract exactly how many.)
What this does really is discourage excessive overtime work, whilst simultaneously giving you an allowance for overtime up and until the limit.
One thing I’ll add is that you should be careful with the hours if you ever need to go to the labor bureau. Had something similar happen to me with a discretionary hours job, and they said it would be difficult to “enforce” payment for days with shorter hours.
9 comments
My company has a discretionary labor system for engineers. I start work around 7am every day and end between 4-5pm, unless I’ve got something important to deal with beyond that.
I think it really depends on your company, but I’d imagine the culture you’re hiring into would come out in the interview process.
Nothing good or bad about it inherently. Just depends on the company and your own skills. I’m on a similar system (管理監督労働者) and completely manage my own hours. During slow periods, like this entire summer basically, I sometimes work as little as 1 or 2 hours a day. I can also work at home or go into office however I want. Nobody else is allowed to manage my hours or schedule.
You need more information on how your team/company runs.
Been under this system for almost a decade. As others have said, it’s all up to your workplace’s culture. In principle, you should be able to decide exactly how long you need to work in order to finish tasks and meet deadlines. Some days are slow, some days are tough. Days when I need to pull an all-nighter (not so often these days) were usually my fault for procrastinating in the first place. Nobody dictates my schedule other than the mutually agreed upon deadlines and targets.
You could look at it as an evil system for having you do unpaid overtime without getting paid, or you could look at it as a system that lets you work the hours you need without having to worry about always getting approval, etc.
I would ask your work places expectation, in terms of core hours – in other words when there is a lot of work to do, of course you might have to do overtime, but when you don’t have work, are you expected to be in the office for 8 hours and “find something to do”? Or maybe not so much.
Anyway, good or bad, it’s a very common system, so using this alone isn’t cause for concern.
If they are constantly giving you 80 hours of work every week year round, that is a concern no matter the system.
If you are working mostly by yourself, without someone else micromanaging you, it’s a great system. I arrive at work any time, leave any time, if I need to run some errand in the middle of the day I just go and come back, and nobody cares what I’m going. But of course I may be called at work at any time if there are urgent issues, or have to work on weekends or 2am online meetings on other time zones.
But for 90% of my colleagues who are not so lucky with their bosses, discretionary labor system means they work every day from 8:30 to 19:30, half of the Saturdays, many holidays, and don’t get paid overtime for any of it.
I work under that system and it pretty much means that my work day can last anywhere from 1minute to the full 24hours. I don’t get paid for overtime since I don’t officially have a set hours of work per day and thus also don’t have an hourly pay.
On average, I work 4-5 hours a day on regular days but a few weeks per year I have to work 10-12hours a day (considering I work from home, those busy days are still less time than when I commuted, tho).
This system is perfect for me as a team leader since most of the time, there is simply not enough work to stay busy 8 hours but twice a year, I have to do the evaluations of my team members and it gets super busy for a few weeks.
It also allows me to easily book dentist/doctor/hair dresser appointments during the day rather than doing it after 7pm when it gets busy.
Overall a great system but I recon that some companies may abuse it to make you work more than 8hours every day without extra pay.
I am working in a research institute and under discretionary system. For us researcher this feels kind of natural and basically things usually go by our own pace.
There is essentially no constraints as to when and where I work except when there is a scheduled meeting or I have to work with others in a laboratory.
But I must say our case is kind of special and probably very different from other jobs. In a sense, no one cares if we worked very short hours or not, as long as we have results. The otherwise obviously applies.
It’s a good thing IMO, but the key point is that it caps your overtime to x hours per week or month (will be written in your contract exactly how many.)
What this does really is discourage excessive overtime work, whilst simultaneously giving you an allowance for overtime up and until the limit.
One thing I’ll add is that you should be careful with the hours if you ever need to go to the labor bureau. Had something similar happen to me with a discretionary hours job, and they said it would be difficult to “enforce” payment for days with shorter hours.