Rising overtime may be telling you that you are short-staffed

The short answer

When overtime is rising, lay the attendance records out month by month. That makes it much easier to tell a temporary busy season from a sign that staffing or the way work is shared out no longer fits. If overtime does not come back down after the peak, or it is always the same people staying late, it is time to review both staffing and the work itself. The longer it runs, the more likely the strain on current staff is to cause the next resignation.

Is it really "just a bit busy"?

Overtime creeps up gradually, which makes it hard to notice on the floor. Thirty minutes a day more than last month is easy to write off as a hectic month. But once it has lasted three months, then six, those hours are no longer temporary. They have become part of the normal monthly workload.

Use the records rather than a feeling. From your attendance data, line up these three things by month:

• Total overtime per department or work area
• The few people with the most overtime, and how many hours each
• Whether overtime returns to its earlier level before and after the busy season

If it stays up after the busy season ends, you may have too few people for the volume of work, or the work may be unevenly shared out. If attendance lives in Excel and producing this view takes effort every time, our column on moving attendance off Excel may help.

Three reasons overtime becomes the norm

1. Headcount fell, but the work did not

When someone resigns or goes on leave, the people left often split that person's work between them. That is a natural short-term response. But if nobody is brought in and time passes, the share each person picked up simply stays on as overtime.

2. Work is collecting around particular people

If only one person can do a task, their overtime alone rises in busy periods. It may barely show in the department total, but set it out person by person and the imbalance is obvious.

3. The work itself keeps growing

New customers, more product lines, extra checks and extra record-keeping: work gets added a little at a time. If nobody decides what to drop when something is added, the difference is made up with overtime.

Overtime has legal limits

Japanese law caps overtime. According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, overtime set in an Article 36 agreement is limited in principle to 45 hours a month and 360 hours a year. Even where special temporary circumstances exist and management and workers agree, it must stay within 720 hours a year, an average of 80 hours across multiple months (including holiday work), and under 100 hours in a single month (including holiday work). These caps have applied to small and medium-sized companies since April 2020. Construction, driving work and doctors, among others, had a five-year grace period; the caps have applied to them since April 2024, but in a different form from other sectors.

If you only start planning once someone is near the limit, your options are few. Treat 45 hours a month as a reference point and check mid-month whether anyone is approaching it, so you are not finding out after the close. How overtime hours are categorised for pay is set out in our column on calculating overtime pay. For your own agreement and individual cases, check with a licensed labour and social security attorney (sharoushi) or the Labour Standards Inspection Office.

Strain on current staff leads to the next resignation

Sustained overtime shows up first as fatigue in the people you already have. Those carrying the most work find it hardest to take time off, and if one of them leaves, even more lands on whoever remains. New hires, meanwhile, arrive on a busy floor with no time set aside to teach them, which makes them less likely to stay. We look at that side in our column on why new hires leave.

Review staffing and the work together

Even once you start recruiting, it takes time for someone to join and become able to carry work on their own. Overtime continues in the meantime, so alongside hiring, work on what can change in the current workload:

• List the work of the people with the most overtime, and separate out what someone else could take
• Starting with tasks that already follow a set routine, put the steps and decision rules on one page
• Look for tasks you can stop, and checks you can do less often

Take, for example, a warehouse where overtime on outbound shipping has been running for months. Suppose the records show that most of it falls on the pre-dispatch inspection in the late afternoon, and only two people are able to make the inspection calls. Adding one more person will not reduce overtime until that person can make those calls. On the other hand, if the inspection criteria are written down and the parts that need no judgement are handed to someone else, the late-afternoon load may be shared even at current headcount.

Bringing in outside help for part of the work is another option. Whatever route you take, it only works once you have decided what you are asking for and how far it goes. Whether to add people or divide the work differently is not an either-or choice. Decide after the records show where, and on whom, the overtime is falling.

Summary

Rising overtime can mean a temporary busy spell, or it can mean too few people or work concentrated on a few. Lay attendance out by month and by person, and check whether it returns to its earlier level after the peak. Overtime is capped in principle at 45 hours a month and 360 hours a year, and this applies to smaller companies too. While you recruit, dividing up the current work in parallel helps stop the load from staying on the same few people.

Dividing up work and organising attendance records are also topics APOUL covers in consultations (accepted from 1 November 2026). For questions that need a labour-law judgement, please consult a licensed labour and social security attorney (sharoushi).