Overworked in Two Different Currencies: Istanbul and Johannesburg
Priya MehtaAugust 3, 2026 6 min read
Note substitution: the original day's algorithm assigned India vs USA for this slot, which had already been covered on 2026-07-28. Turkey vs South Africa was substituted to avoid repeating a subject-country pair.
🇹🇷 Turkey · 🇿🇦 South Africa
By Priya Mehta, The Global Office
Turkey has the highest share of people working very long hours of any OECD country — 34%, more than three times the OECD average of 10%. South Africa doesn't top that particular list, but it's been separately measured working more total hours per year than almost anywhere else on earth while reporting some of the lowest happiness scores in the same surveys. Neither country lacks overtime laws. Both have quietly built a professional culture that treats those laws as a starting point for negotiation, not an actual ceiling.
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Do's & Don'ts
🇹🇷 Turkey
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Clarify your actual expected hours before signing — the legal 45-hour week and OECD's 34% long-hours figure can both be true of the same office | Don't assume a stated 45-hour contract reflects real expectations, especially at ambitious or growth-stage companies |
| Ask specifically how overtime is compensated — 50% extra pay or 1.5x time off, per Turkish labor law | Don't assume multinational employers automatically import better work-life balance — some expats report the opposite |
| Look into companies actively adopting shorter weeks — at least one major employer has permanently moved to a four-day week | Don't take the 270-hour annual overtime cap as evidence hours are actually capped in practice |
| Ask directly about domestic and after-hours expectations, especially if you're a woman — data shows a pronounced gender gap in unpaid labor after work hours | Don't underestimate how much industry and specific employer vary the real answer — averages hide a wide range |
| Weigh in fully on whether the job's compensation and growth genuinely offset the long-hours reputation | Don't rely on Turkey's Expat Insider rankings alone — they reflect averages, and your specific employer can beat or badly miss them |
🇿🇦 South Africa
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Confirm overtime is voluntary and mutually agreed — South African law requires actual consent, not assumption | Don't accept unpaid overtime under pressure — it's a violation of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act below a set earnings threshold |
| Ask how your specific team handles understaffing — a recurring driver of informal, unlogged overtime | Don't assume standard hours (40-45/week) reflect what's actually asked of you once you're in the role |
| Push for concrete flexible-work arrangements if available — South African employers lag UK peers on this specifically | Don't assume low productivity pressure won't translate into longer hours for the same output — it's a documented dynamic |
| Track your hours and overtime pay entitlements yourself — many employees are unfamiliar with their own rights here | Don't stay quiet if overtime becomes routine and unpaid — payroll and HR bodies have flagged this as a recurring compliance gap |
| Factor in load-shedding, commute times, and cost-of-living stress as real contributors to reported low happiness scores, not just hours worked | Don't assume "work-life balance" complaints are only about clock hours — broader quality-of-life stress compounds the picture |
Turkey's overtime numbers are stark by any international comparison: nearly a quarter of employees worked 60 hours or more per week in the most recent OECD data cited, and the country has consistently ranked at or near the bottom of InterNations' Expat Insider Working Abroad Index — in the bottom 10 of 59 destinations since 2017. Turkey's legal framework isn't especially loose on paper — a 45-hour week, overtime paid at 150% of base wage, an annual overtime ceiling of 270 hours — but the gap between the law and the lived reality shows up repeatedly in expat and employee accounts. A gendered layer compounds this: Turkish men reportedly spend far less time on domestic work after hours than international peers, while Turkish women spend considerably more, meaning the same nominal workday produces very different total workloads depending on who's living it.
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South Africa's story is less about a single extreme statistic and more about a persistent, broad-based strain. The country has been measured working roughly 2,209 hours a year, among the highest such figures globally, with about 18.1% of employees clocking 50 or more hours a week against an OECD average of 10%. Separate coverage summarizing a happiness and workload survey put it bluntly: South Africans work the hardest and report being among the least happy. Structurally, South African overtime law requires mutual agreement and caps extra hours at 3 per day or 10 per week, but HR and payroll bodies have repeatedly flagged that many employees don't know their own entitlements well enough to enforce them, and understaffing frequently pushes real hours past what's logged or compensated.
The Reckoning: Turkey's overtime problem is concentrated and extreme — a genuinely enormous share of the workforce working genuinely enormous hours, a statistic that shows up clearly in a single OECD figure. South Africa's problem is more diffuse — a broadly overworked, broadly unhappy workforce where the strain comes as much from cost-of-living pressure, understaffing, and low measured productivity as from any single dramatic overtime statistic. Both countries have functioning labor law on the books; both have a documented, well-measured gap between that law and daily practice. The practical difference for a relocating professional is where to direct scrutiny: in Turkey, ask pointed questions about actual weekly hours before signing, because the national average genuinely runs long; in South Africa, ask pointed questions about staffing levels and overtime enforcement specifically, because the strain is less about headline hours and more about whether the hours you do work get properly recognized and paid.
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The Part the Brochure Left Out
Quora — Responding to "Is it true that there is no work-life balance in Turkey?", one contributor stated flatly that genuine work-life balance was rare even at multinational companies operating in the country, not just local firms.
InterNations Expat Insider survey — A Brazilian respondent living in Turkey described the hardest adjustments as "collapsing currency, conservative and strict values at most workplaces, and long working hours" — three separate stresses that compounded rather than existing independently.
HR Future / FANews (survey coverage) — Reporting on a workplace happiness survey concluded plainly that South Africans work the hardest of the countries measured while reporting among the lowest happiness scores, a combination the piece linked directly to under-resourced teams rather than any single cultural preference for long hours.
JustAnswer (South Africa labor forum) — Someone describing a boss who expected unpaid overtime explained the root cause bluntly: the company had taken on more projects without hiring enough staff to cover them, leaving existing employees absorbing the gap informally.
Conclusion
If you're moving to Istanbul, treat the 45-hour legal week as a floor to interrogate, not a ceiling to expect — ask your specific team about real hours before you sign anything. If you're moving to Johannesburg or Cape Town, ask less about headline hours and more about staffing levels, because the exhaustion there is as much about doing more with less as it is about the clock. Priya's honest read for a friend considering either move: in Turkey, negotiate your hours; in South Africa, negotiate your headcount.
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Photo by Yan Krukau via Pexels
Priya Mehta
Staff writer covering financial markets and corporate strategy. Has strong opinions about spreadsheets.