Weighed down by work in Hong Kong 

Work stress in Hong Kong is often said to be more intense than in other places. It’s an affliction that takes its toll – sometimes with deadly consequences. At times, more frequently than employers like to admit, the pressure becomes so much that it can turn deadly. 

Hong Kong has gained some notoriety for its long working hours and the high demand for results. Nowhere is the rat race more intense than at banks, law firms and consulting firms. Yet, despite all such pressure weighing on the working person, stress management gets barely a lick and a promise and that bodes a worsening problem. The most infamous case in Hong Kong, and possibly the most tragic, claimed the lives of two innocent victims. The two women, both Indonesians, died under the hand of Rurik Jutting, a British investment banker who turned into sadistic killer. The case turned the spotlight on work-related stress in Hong Kong. 

Jutting had been a vice-president at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong. He was a graduate of Cambridge University. After the shocking murders were discovered in 2014, Jutting confessed that he had been taking heavy doses of cocaine. He said he had cracked under the pressure of his banking career, especially from his immediate superior. His defence at the trial argued that he had developed multiple mental disorders and spiralled out of control. He had been calling in sick. In the final month of his employment, he worked only between 10 and 15 days.

Jutting picked up his victims in local bars. He persuaded them to come to his apartment. It was the last place they ever went. Their mutilated bodies were found in suitcases on his apartment balcony.

Mortal work custom

The average work hours on any given day in Hong Kong can stretch long into the night, extending the drive for success and profit into a near mania. Working hours in Hong Kong far exceed those of other major cities. The numbers are there in black and white. A report by the Census and Statistics Department revealed that Hong Kong employees work an average of 2,300 hours a year. In the more sanguine cities of the industrialised world, employees work only 1,700 hours, on average. 

Another study released in May 2016 by the international bank UBS, which surveyed work hours across 71 cities, found Hong Kong’s workforce worked the longest by far. The average weekly working hours in Hong Kong from 15 professions are 50.11. Working hours in Paris average 30.84 hours per week (the shortest work week among all cities), compared to 43.78 hours in Mumbai, which has the second longest work week, according to the study.

In the world of draft animals only horses are expected to work 50 hours a week. The impact on people forced to pull the plough for 50 hours a week can be crushing.

There was a case in 2014 of a junior-level investment banker at JPMorgan who jumped off the roof of the bank’s Hong Kong headquarters. The young man had complained to a colleague that the stress was breaking him down. The media caught on and highlighted the stressful work environment among investment bankers. 

There are no laws in Hong Kong to define or identify work stress and no ordinances to manage it. Employers are obliged to ensure the health and safety of employees, and which looks good on paper, but in a highly pressurised environment some employees are afraid to confess that they are cracking under pressure.  Some mental health practitioners call stress a disability, but work stress is not found in the Hong Kong Disability Discrimination Ordinance. Under the watchful scowl of Big Brother – the boss – workers think they have to put in longer hours than the guy at the next desk, and toil at the office even after the boss goes home, otherwise there goes that promotion.

How bad is it? In 2004, the Occupational Safety and Health Council found that 60 per cent of local workers are under severe stress in the finance, property management and telecom industries.

Au Yeung Kwok-leung, a Hong Kong-based psychiatrist, told China Daily: “You might think this sounds ridiculous, but in a working environment where everyone around you has the same workload, and the same 12-hour shift, it makes you feel it’s normal and you try to do your best to fit in. Your body just cannot deal with these working hours and workload.”

Hong Kong is not the worst in terms of suicide rate in Asia. Japan and South Korea, from what I know, have serious work-related stress, Au Yeung added. In Japan, the government has warned that one in five workers is at risk of dying from overwork. In 2014, a 27-year-old dropped dead at his firm’s dormitory. He died of heart failure. Japan’s labor standards authority ruled that his death was directly related to long overtime hours he was forced to work.

“Teachers in Hong Kong are also highly stressed,” Au Yeung added. “Accountants and lawyers are on the list. It’s not uncommon for my patients in these fields to work more than 12 hours a day, six days a week.”

Joe Chan, who worked at a Hong Kong-based bank for four years, said the stress became too much for him. He quit his job and went to work for the government. “It is true that government positions offer fewer benefits than the bank and the pay here is lower, too,” Chan told China Daily. “However, I never got off work on time, and I used to be asked to travel to other countries and regions during weekends to attend social events with clients and sometimes to entertain them the whole day. I never got to rest.”

Chan, who now finishes work and goes home on schedule, has a life back. “I feel like even if I could earn more at the bank, I would never have the time and energy to spend my money and enjoy life. I am a lot happier now,” he added.

Hong Kong has no “specific laws placing onus on employers to identify and manage their employees’ mental health”, said Kathryn Weaver, a lawyer who specialises in employment law at Lewis Silkin, a private law firm with offices in London, Oxford and Hong Kong. “Due to the culture of working hard for long hours in Hong Kong, stress is almost an expected part of people’s working life here.”