Doing Business 2020 by The World Bank

Author:The World Bank
Language: eng
Format: epub

Flexibility of hours

To capture the flexibility in legislation governing working hours, the employing workers indicator set measures the length of the workweek, restrictions and premiums on nonregular working hours (such as night work, weekly holiday work, and overtime work), and the length of paid annual leave. Research shows that greater employee freedom in choosing working hours leads to higher productivity.16 Nevertheless, daily hours must not be set so high that workers become susceptible to fatigue and reduced productivity.17 Ninety percent of economies have a workweek that is between five and a half and six days. In 2018/19 Austria and Hungary reformed in the area of working hours. Austria increased overtime to 12 hours per day and 60 hours per week.18 Hungary raised its overtime allowance to a maximum of 400 hours per calendar year. In 2016, Hungary also removed restrictions on working hours for retail stores, allowing them to open on Sundays.

Paid leave is the period during which workers take time away from their job while continuing to receive an income and social protections.19 Doing Business measures annual leave days for workers with 1, 5, and 10 years of tenure. With 23.4 working days on average, the Middle East and North Africa is the region with the most paid annual leave, followed by Sub-Saharan Africa with 21.7 days. Workers in Guinea, Libya, and Togo, for example, are entitled to annual leave of 30 working days on average, one and a half times the global average of 18.8 days (figure 4.2). However, 9 out of every 10 employees in Sub-Saharan Africa operate in the informal sector;20 therefore, the intended social protection provided by paid leave reaches only a select few.

FIGURE 4.2 Economies in the Middle East and North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa have the longest paid annual leave

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