Working Overtime Habit - Survey Report

In our fast-paced everyday lives, working overtime has been being a common view, particularly in big cities in a developing country like Indonesia. Aside from their formal working hours schedule, we can still see a lot of Indonesian workers take off from work during the after-hour. Therefore, we would like to know further regarding the working overtime habit of Indonesian workers. Recently, Jakpat has conducted a survey in order to reveal that. This survey involved 260 respondents from 23 to 45 year-old. They are workers from across Indonesia, particularly in 10 big cities including Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Medan, Makassar, Denpasar, Palembang, and Balikpapan, from various kinds of industries they currently work in. First of all, apparently most of Indonesian workers (85%) have ever been working overtime.

In general, Indonesian workers spend approximately 7 to 8 hours in a day to work. However, it turns out that those hours aren’t enough for them, which resulting in working overtime habit. When asked about how long they work overtime in a day, almost half of them (47%) admitted that they work overtime for about one to three hours. Meanwhile, some of them stated that they spend three to five hours to work overtime (28%) and more than five hours in a day (9%). Apparently, women are more likely than men to spend about one to three hours for working overtime in a day (56% VS 39%).

When asked about when they often take their time to work overtime, most of Indonesian workers (74%) admitted that they do work overtime in anytime regarding to their needs. A few of them stated that they usually work overtime during the end of the month (16%), the beginning of the month (6%), and in the middle of the month (4%). So, why do they work overtime? Most of them (67%) admitted that they work overtime in order to catch up with their deadline. Some of them (38%) stated that their jobdesk is overload in a day, therefore they choose to work overtime. Meanwhile, some of them admitted that they work overtime because of their co-workers (19%) or they prepare for a leaving or vacation for the next days to come (18%).

Despite they do it many times, Indonesian workers also admit that working overtime has brought a side effect towards their physics. Most of them (86%) admitted that they got low energy at work due to tiredness. Some of them (48%) admitted that they frequently lose focus on the job. Concurrently, quite a few of them (26%) admitted that they doze off in the office. However, more than half of them (57%) still think that working overtime is an effective method to do, in spite of any negative side effect that it might bring towards them. Furthermore, more than half of them (56%) choose to work overtime because of their own decisions, instead of being ordered by their employers.

Apparently, 67% of Indonesian workers choose to work overtime with their co-workers rather than to work alone. Both male and female workers agree to this. Lastly, when asked about what time they take off from work after working overtime, most of them (68%) stated that they go home approximately at 7 to 9 p.m. According to this survey, Indonesian workers tend to exert their potential through working overtime. They already know all the consequences, yet they choose to do it anyway.

For more detail you can download XLS report at the button below. JAKPAT report consists of 3 parts which are 1) Respondent Profile, 2) Crosstabulation for each question and 3) Raw Data. Respondent profile shows you demographic profiles ( gender,age range, location by province, and monthly spending). Cross tabulation enables you to define different demographic segment preference on each answer.