What’s making Hong Kong employees frustrated at work? New survey reveals the top complaints

A new survey of Hong Kong employment conditions has cited long working hours as the top complaint among employees in the financial hub. A domineering senior management and a lack of communication from them also ranked high.

The long working hours was cited by 65 per cent of people in an inaugural survey commissioned by law firm Deacons in November last year, amid the worst period of anti-government protests in the city. The survey covered 1,010 employees and 100 in-house legal and human-resource professionals.

Among them, 43 per cent were classified as “entry level or junior” employees, 49 per cent were mid- or senior-level managers, with the rest being directors or corporate-suite officials. They worked in multinational companies, start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises.

“I was in labour and even two hours before giving birth, I was still answering my BlackBerry,” said Cynthia Chung, a partner who oversees employment and pensions practice at Deacons in Hong Kong, noting how the digital age has lengthened the work day. “Employers [in Hong Kong] are now thinking of ways to cut the hours. They see others doing something, and they want to catch up.”

The survey reinforces a long-standing labour issue in Hong Kong, where workers have the longest hours in office compared to their peers in 70 other cities based on a 2016 study by UBS. That worked out to about 55 hours per week on average in 2018, according to the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, surpassing the statutory limit in some countries including the UK and Japan.

The Labour Department in Hong Kong has said that it may offer guidelines about working hours in 2020, after efforts to define a standard work week stalled for almost a decade.