Yes, it’s official: Manila is among the places with the highest burnout rates in the world.
A recent data analysis led by American research company SavvySleeper showed that Manila ranks fifth—among the 69 cities in 53 countries that were analyzed—in places where employees are most vulnerable to experiencing burnout.
This data, according to the research company, was collected from seven reputable sources, including the International Labour Organization, the Global Employee Engagement Index and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Over 340,000 employee reviews on Glassdoor were also used to produce the rankings.
Landing the number one spot was Tokyo in Japan, which was followed by Mumbai in India, Seoul in South Korea and Istanbul in Turkey. Manila gathered a burnout score of 5.51 overall, good for fifth place.
According to the data, the ranking of Manila was due to the high count in the number of reviews from stressed employees (5.18) and annual work hours (6.21). The numbers of employees who work for over 48 hours and sleep less than seven hours were also high with scores of 5.65 and 6.81, respectively. Vacation time (or the lack of) also emerged as a problem among employees, as it scored 7.06.
Unsurprisingly, however, the highest score that Manila got was for the amount of time employees spent in traffic going to work. Recording 9.74, this is also the highest score that this specific factor received among all the other countries analyzed.
Not being able to function fully due to being sick while on the job, lack of motivation, mental health disorder and substance abuse were also among factors considered in the study.
While most of the top 10 spots were occupied by cities in Asia, all the bottom 10 in the research’s rankings were in Europe. The study reasoned that this is probably due to the working conditions in the continent.
In fact, employees in the city with the least burnout rate—which is Tallinn in Estonia—are said to be able to enjoy an average of 29.1 paid days off. Data also showed that only 5.6 percent work for over 48 hours a week.
“Europe has often enjoyed a reputation for being more laid-back than its continental counterparts and this attitude is reflected in France’s recent law allowing employees to switch off from work emails when out of the office,” said SavvySleeper.
Header photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash
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