When I was a Salaryman which means a Japanese white-collar worker, I had worked so hard. I was in the office until midnight almost every single day. All employees worked overtime usually. There were many meetings, tasks about writing documents, negotiations, reporting, etc.
But the labor productivity of Japanese white-collars is lower than in Western countries in general. Because many of their tasks are were wasteful. For example, there are some participants of meetings who don’t speak anything. They don’t need to attend the meetings. But they want to pretend to be busy with work.
Usual Japanese companies pay extra salary to employees who work overtime. So, some people stay at their offices even if they don’t have any tasks to do. Then, they get overtime payment. It means that companies pay salary not for results but for time. It is wasting money for companies. The businesses would lose their competitiveness if they continue to do that.
Companies in western countries pay salaries for the result in general. Japanese companies should do that.