Toyota has been the matinée idol of mainstream automakers for some time now. Car buyers want to be with it, and car makers want to be it. But how does the Toyota stack up against other well-known (non-car) brands? The Global Pulse survey (pdf) by research firm The Reputation Institute shows that even compared against 1,000 of the worlds top brands, Toyota is the Worlds Most Respected Company. Setting aside the pure hyperbole of the title, and the fact that it comes from a firm that should have been voted "Most Pretentiously Named Company," this is a huge achievement. Indeed no other automaker cracked the list, save for Volvo Bilar and Tata Motors' parent company, Tata Group. And whence cometh these godlike achievements by ToMoCo? Very, very committed employees is one possible answer. Motor Authority reports that a Toyota engineer involved in developing the Camry Hybrid died as a result of overwork. Although overtime work is common in Japan, the late engineer was working 80 hours of overtime per month prior to kicking the bucket from ischemic heart disease. The last time we heard about a Toyota employee being worked to death was back in 2002, when a 30-year-old worker died after carrying 70 hours of overtime per month. Apparently, that's the kind of improvement that it takes to stay at the top.
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
80 hours/month = 60 hours per week. That’s pretty typical for lawyers and companies that have a specific time of year that they complete the bulk of their business. I worked for a company like that. I don’t know, given his responsibility, etc. I don’t see anything crazy about working that much overtime.
If you work in private practice (law) with a big firm you have to bill 1,800+ hours a year to meet minimum salary and another 200+ to get bonuses.
Ischemic heart disease – Isn’t that something you get from eating too many cheeseburgers?
agree with jwitch.
60 hours a week is not outrageous. Those employees probably had other conditions to which overworking only contributed. I’ve been at 60-65 per week for a while, and as long as you pay some attention to diet and exercise, it’s fine. Once you push up past 70hrs/week is when you start feeling it. At that point I can see it being dangerous.
And Toyota as the most respected? I’d say Google (#2) is FAR ahead of them. Other headscratchers:
#3 Ikea- really? disposable low-cost furniture?
#7 Kraft Foods – mmm processed cheese..
I’m surprised Sony and BMW are nowhere to be seen.
I bet he was working a lot more than 80 hours overtime a month. When busy 7 twelve hour days a week is common in the NA industry. Closer to 200 hours overtime a month. Of course the problem being the Japanese aren’t as well compensated for that overtime.
About 12 years ago, I went to work for a local Nabisco margarine plant. I started the first week of August, which was the beginning of the “busy season” leading up to the holidays. Being the lowest senior person in the entire plant, I was forced to work over every day at least four hours and sometimes eight.
At the time, we were running 13 days on and one off. Therefore I was working 84 hours one week and 72 hours the next – minimum. I routinely hit 90 hours on the seven day week. This went on till the end of the year (we did get off for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
In a four week span, I was working 312 hours minimum – 152 hours overtime. Of course, I wouldn’t have stayed there much longer had that been the pace year-round…
My dad used to drive about 75 miles to work on the railroad and he routinely worked 12 hour days, sometimes longer. His 60+ hour weeks were hard since all his time was outside. Add in the three hours of driving each day, and he was spending 15-16 hours per day dealing with work. He did that for almost 20 years.
We get 60 hrs/wk from the story because we assume that the regular work week in Japan is, like ours, 40 hrs/wk. But is it though? What if their regular schedule is 60 hrs/wk? Add in OT, and we’re talking about 80 hrs/wk.
Granted, in law or investment banking, it’s normal to have 80 hrs/wk. And there is no OT.
80 hours extra per month was the *declared* overtime. I believe it was estimated he had as much as 120 hours of extra overtime that was not declared and was unpaid. That works out to be 100 hours per week if you assume a 40 hour work week. That’s no time off – no weekends. Just work constantly. I worked 100 hours for two weeks in a row in my last job (spent probably 15 hours commuting each week) and ended up sleeping through almost an entire day after that – 16 hours of straight sleep. Lawyers and bankers (and others) do, in fact, often work a 100 hour week here and there, but it isn’t constant. You have rushes and then you get a few days “easy” and settle back to your 60-80 hour weeks, and it feels like heaven. I couldn’t imagine working that much for more than a month.
If you add excessive overtime, stress, pressure, bad nutrition habits (and bet that working so much they have them), no sleeping… of course the heart has to explode.
Big question: why Toyota needs so much overtime? If they’re so rich, they can hire more engineers, or not ;).
Blah, they’re perfect, screw that.
Monitoring one’s health is not a luxury when it comes to working insane hours. If you’re young and healthy, it can easily be done – ask anyone who has served in the military in a war zone.
As one gets older, you really have to watch it.
Having worked for Toyota for 4 years of which 2 was spent at head office in Japan, this topic really annoys me for two reasons;
1. The 80hrs of OT worked doesn’t include what Toyota insultingly calls “voluntary” OT, or unrecorded work hours hidden in the system as 2hr lunchbreaks or “training”. Up to 4hrs a day can be hidden in this manner. Similarly 45hrs + of OT/month is standard operating procedure for most engineers in Toyota.
2. Whilst tracking the number of Karoshi cases is all well and good, what consideration is given to the massive numbers of nervous breakdowns within the company? My friend and colleague suffered 2 within a year! Another worker passed out in the office to which his boss commented “All employees should work that hard” and then did nothing to help.
Toyota is not a respectable company and it’s success is driven off the backs of it’s employees to whipped to stand up for themselves.
I think I have an “80 Hours a Week and Loving It” shirt from Y2K. The load didn’t go down much since then.
The work/life balance is a tricky one. I don’t think that, historically, the eight-hour work week is any kind of norm. Humans (well, the vast majority who didn’t make it into history books) traditionally, worked many of their waking hours, both before and well into Industrialization. It’s really only recently that the middle class can afford leisure time.
Of course, thge >50 year life expectancy is new, too.
I have to agree with jwitch; I worked for a Class One railroad for eighteen years and 60 hours per week was pretty standard stuff. And I knew many who did more than that. Not to take anything away from this poor engineer who prematurely took a knee but I have to imagine he had other issues going on as well.
My understanding is that they work long hours but they don’t actually do more work. You’re perceived to be lazy if you leave on time even if you’re more efficient with it. People stay longer but do less work and take a lot of smoking breaks.
I worked in IT at a bank for a couple of years. Toward the end, I was working 60 hour weeks and was getting sick of it because it was taking a toll on my marriage and my boss didn’t really care because he didn’t like his family. The sad thing is that I got out of that job and now work at a non-profit where unnecessary OT is a big no-no. But yet I still make more money than the bank paid me. I’ve read about karoshi, and I can see how it can kill these poor workers. Work should not be the only thing in life. I knew there was a another reason I didn’t like Toyota, besides their toaster cars.
Hmmm…. I used to do about 7 to 8 auto/motorcycle auctions a week. I worked about 16 to 20 hours at the sales but it really depended on the load of vehicles. Often times the travel time is longer than the work time, and that was especially the case when I was traveling to four different states. Compared to my past life as a financial analyst though, it was like a dream vacation and I’ve never looked back.
The only time in the last ten years that I’ve ever been beholden to someone is when I foolishly got another company to pay for my MBA. In exchange, I left home Monday afternoon and wouldn’t come home until Thursday evening. Of course it wasn’t real work. I inspected and appraised cars (an hour), dealt with a few issues (an hour), sold them (usually a half hour) and then more or less got treated to lunch and dinner or some type of event.
I honestly can’t say strippers in New Orleans and Memphis constituted a workload but, well, we all have to carry our weight in the corporate world.
Anyone who is working ‘overtime’ and NOT getting paid for it is either working for their own company, got a screw loose, or has some financial obligation that’s keeping them on the treadmill. #1 and #2 are fine… but #3 is where the heart attacks reign supreme. I see enough ‘reminders’ in my industry to know that the workaholic life will never be the one for me.
Besides, why bother working if you can’t be a glorified bum.