Introduction
In some workplaces, you still hear phrases like these:
“I work overtime all the time.”
“I can’t even take paid leave.”
“You leave early.”
“You take too many days off.”
“You should have more responsibility.”
Every time I hear this, I think the same thing.
Stop bragging about overtime. Stop romanticizing the inability to take paid leave.
Working long hours is not automatically a sign of competence. Not taking paid leave is not automatically a sign of responsibility.
Of course, there are situations where people are forced to work overtime because of staff shortages, emergencies, or poorly designed operations. Those people should not be blamed.
The real problem is when overtime and unused leave are treated as proof of dedication, and then used to pressure other people.
What matters is not time spent, but whether work moved forward
The key question is not “How many hours were you at work?”
The real questions are:
- What was prioritized?
- Was the deliverable completed?
- Was the necessary information shared?
- Was the handover completed?
- Was the right person asked to make a decision?
- Was the time spent worth the labor cost?
- Was the root cause fixed by a system, not by individual effort?
Someone can stay late every day and still fail to move important work forward.
If important documents are left untouched, if information is not shared, if key decisions are delayed, or if hours are wasted in low-value meetings, then staying late does not mean the work is progressing.
Being present for a long time and actually moving work forward are two different things.
Overtime bragging is visual labor management
People often assume that someone who works late must be working hard.
They are still at their desk. They are in meetings all day. They look busy. They say they are overwhelmed.
Visually, it looks like work.
But this is dangerous.
That is not performance management. It is visual labor management.
The important questions are:
What was decided? What moved forward? What remains pending? Who owns the next action? What is the deadline?
If a workplace judges people by how long they stay rather than what they actually complete, it will slowly reward inefficient behavior.
Not taking paid leave is not a badge of honor
Some people proudly say:
“I never take paid leave.”
“I’m too busy to take time off.”
“When I was younger, nobody took leave.”
“I can’t rest because the work won’t move without me.”
But that is not something to brag about.
If someone cannot take paid leave, it may indicate a management problem.
Possible causes include:
- Insufficient staffing
- Work being too dependent on one person
- Poor handover design
- Unclear priorities
- A system that cannot function when one person is absent
- A workplace culture that discourages taking leave
In other words, “I can’t take leave” should not become “I am more responsible than you.”
It should become: “Why is the workplace designed so that people cannot take leave?”
If you want to guide others, first look at your own labor cost
The most frustrating case is when someone lectures others about responsibility while wasting time themselves.
For example, a manager might leave important documents untouched while spending two hours on a low-value external sales conversation.
Then the same person criticizes others:
“You need to think more.”
“You should confirm things properly.”
“You need more responsibility.”
“You do not work enough overtime.”
“You take paid leave too easily.”
This is not management.
If you are going to guide others, first look at your own two hours of labor cost.
What did that conversation decide? What moved forward? What bottleneck was removed? Was it really more important than the pending internal issue?
Without asking these questions, criticizing someone else’s overtime hours or paid leave usage is just workplace theater.
If everything becomes an “individual awareness problem,” the same failure will happen again
When work-related problems happen, many organizations respond with weak phrases:
“We will be more careful.”
“The person in charge should be more aware.”
“We will share information more thoroughly.”
“It was a lack of confirmation.”
These sound reasonable, but they are often too weak.
If the necessary information never reaches the person in charge, that person cannot know it.
A process that depends on individual memory, awareness, and goodwill will fail the moment information does not flow properly.
This is especially true for matters such as contract changes, changes in employee intentions, approval status, renewal timing, and handovers.
These should not be managed by memory.
They should be visible.
A simple shared tracker can include:
- Person concerned
- Current contract type
- Current contract period
- Next contract type
- Next contract period
- Person’s intention
- Approval status
- Department sharing status
- Pending issues
- Next action
- Owner
- Deadline
If these items are visible, pending issues become obvious.
The goal is not “someone should notice.” The goal is “anyone can see what is still pending.”
The real issue is defining responsibility boundaries
Work has transition points.
Confirming a person’s intention. Checking with a manager. Checking with an agency. Sharing information with HR. Deciding the next contract type. Getting approval. Completing a handover. Processing everything before the deadline.
At each transition point, someone must know:
Who checks it? When do they check it? How far does their responsibility go? Where is the information shared? Who updates the tracker? Who escalates pending issues?
If this is not defined, the failure will eventually be blamed on someone’s “lack of confirmation.”
But the real issue is not always individual failure. It is often the absence of role design.
Useful labels for the pattern
A few rough labels help explain the pattern.
Overtime Bragging Monkey
Someone who mistakes long hours for importance and pressures others to do the same.
Unused Leave Zombie
Someone who could not take leave and now treats that as a virtue others should imitate.
Monkey Meeting
A meeting that burns time but does not decide anything.
Leaky Zoo Organization
A workplace full of holes in systems, responsibility boundaries, and information sharing, where capable individuals are expected to patch everything with awareness and goodwill.
These labels are not meant to attack specific individuals. They are tools for recognizing workplace patterns.
Instead of asking, “Is this my fault?” you can ask, “What structure is causing this?”
Conclusion
Do not brag about overtime. Do not romanticize unused paid leave. Do not criticize people for working efficiently. Do not shame people for taking leave.
Work should not be evaluated by how long someone stayed at the office.
It should be evaluated by whether work moved forward, whether information was shared, whether deadlines were managed, whether roles were clear, whether time was used wisely, and whether failures were prevented by systems rather than individual effort.
Working long hours is sometimes unavoidable. But turning long hours into moral superiority is dangerous.
A healthy workplace does not need overtime bragging. It does not need unused-leave pride. It does not need time-wasting meetings.
It needs priority management, role clarity, visibility, deadline control, and respect for people’s time.
参考情報メモ
- 厚生労働省は、時間外労働の上限について原則「月45時間・年360時間」と説明している。臨時的な特別事情がある場合でも、年720時間以内、複数月平均80時間以内、月100時間未満などの上限がある。
- 東京労働局は、2019年4月から、年10日以上の年次有給休暇が付与される労働者について、年5日の取得が使用者に義務付けられたと説明している。
- 日本生産性本部の「労働生産性の国際比較2025」では、OECDデータに基づく2024年の日本の時間当たり労働生産性はOECD加盟38か国中28位とされている。
