Some Japanese firms are trying to break the culture of long working hours by using drones with farewell songs, local media reported.
Telecom giant NTT East Corp. and two other companies announced last week that they are launching the service next April, the Japan News reported. A drone may cost 50,000 yen (450 U.S. dollars) a month.
The drone, created by a Tokyo-based start-up, will fly around the offices on a scheduled flight path blasting Auld Lang Syne, which is usually played in Japanese malls before closing. The drone can also film inside offices to identify employees who stay after work hours.
Will this solve the problem? Some experts doubt that saying workers will likely take work home if the music harasses them, and the critical issue is to cut workloads for them.
Working for excessive hours in Japan caused thousands of deaths every year, with victims mostly in their 30s and 40s. A white paper on "Karoshi (過労死)", meaning "death by overwork", last year showed 22.7 percent of some 1,700 companies surveyed had employees who worked more than 80 hours of overtime in a month.