Working Hour System and Work Styles among Regular Workers: Evidence from a 2014 RIETI survey on diversified work styles of regular workers and non-regular workers

The discussions about the ways of working full time are increasing these days, and the amendment of the labor standards law includes the "highly professional labor system" which excludes workers in specialized job categories from the overtime pay regulations if certain requirements are met. This paper discusses the practical suggestions on how to work full time, and an understanding of the full-time working hour system, especially the flextime or discretionary labor system and the present system applied from the results of an online survey carried out by RIETI. As a result, (1) there is a statistically significant relation between those who are capable of more flexible working, such as those on a discretionary labor system and those working hours outside the workplace is calculated according to a system of de facto working hours, and those who can decide for themselves the amount of work duties, (2) for those who are applied a discretionary work system, longer working hours are compensated in terms of wages as suggested by the evidence that those applicable have statistically significant long working hours but the coefficient on the wages is not statistically significant, and (3) people who have been applying the discretionary labor system and flexible working hours did so in the absence of a significant level of life satisfaction. These results suggest that we can reduce the expected harm by applying the appropriate measures when we introduce the "highly professional system."