Why addressing excessive working hours is essential to responsible supply chain management

As global supply chains grow more complex, companies are under increasing pressure to ensure that working conditions are safe, fair, and meet global standards and stakeholder expectations.   Among the key social risks that companies continue to face, excessive working hours remain one of the most persistent to address. In 2025, 80% of amfori BSCI-audited factories failed to meet working hours requirements.

Understanding why long hours occur, how they affect workers’ well-being, working conditions and business performance, and how to prioritise improvements is key to building a strong risk management approach.

So, why are working hours such a significant issue in global supply chains? And what should companies consider when aiming to reduce them?

Understanding the challenge of excessive working hours

To start, it is important to understand what excessive working hours actually mean. This goes beyond a simple compliance threshold and requires looking at the broader social and operational context in which factories operate.

The human impact

Excessive working hours affect workers’ physical and mental well-being. Prolonged working hours, common in several sourcing countries, are linked to fatigue, poor health outcomes, and an inability to participate in family or community life. Persistently high overtime also constitutes a forced labour risk according to the ILO, making it a risk companies cannot ignore.

The business impact

The effects are not limited to people. They have measurable consequences for business performance:

• Productivity declines sharply after the eighth or ninth hour of the workday.
• Quality and error rates worsen during long shifts.
• Higher risk of OHS accidents due to worker fatigue and reduced alertness.
• Retention drops, creating a cycle where inexperienced workers reduce efficiency, prompting even longer hours.

In short: long working hours are neither sustainable for workers nor efficient for production.

Why excessive overtime happens

Reducing long hours requires understanding the underlying drivers, which generally fall into three categories: buyer practices, factory operations, and the role of sourcing intermediaries. At the core, these challenges are linked to a lack of responsible purchasing practices, which creates the conditions where long hours become the norm.

The following factors are common in many industries and often arise simply from the fast pace and complexity of global supply chains:

• Capacity planning can be challenging, especially when order volumes or timelines change at short notice, leading to pressure during peak periods.
• Component availability can shorten production windows.
• Communication delays, especially across time zones and languages, may create timing constraints that suppliers need to absorb.

Negotiations centred on cost sometimes limit discussions about feasible timelines, which can influence how factories schedule work. Rather than attributing responsibility to one party, it is more productive to recognise that working hours are shaped by a combination of commercial, operational, and communication factors. When buyers, factories, and sourcing companies understand these pressures collectively, they can identify practical ways to create more stable production timelines and support more balanced working hours.

Using data to identify priorities

To understand the true extent of working hours throughout the supply chain, it is essential to analyse them on a weekly basis. Standardising this information across all sourcing countries enables businesses to:

• Compare suppliers consistently
• Highlight where working hours are highest
• Identify the sites needing action
• Prioritise by both severity and influence

This prioritisation is essential, especially when resources to address issues are limited.

Setting realistic goals to reduce excessive overtime

Reduction goals are most effective when adjusted to the level of risk, for example:

• 70+ hours/week: considered unacceptable and requires urgent reduction before continuing normal business.
• 69–65 hours/week: should show clear improvement within a defined and relatively short timeframe.
• 64–60 hours/week: still high, and a gradual reduction can be targeted, such as two hours over the course of a year.
• 59-48 hours/week: generally lower priority but should continue to be monitored.

Clear internal thresholds help guide decisions, support consistent communication with suppliers, and align improvement efforts with the company’s strategic priorities. To do so effectively, businesses must consult local law requirements, as they provide the legal foundation needed to set thresholds that are both compliant and realistic.

How to address overtime in supply chains

Recognising that not all suppliers require the same level of engagement is crucial.

Transactional suppliers

For low-influence or one-off production sites:

• Request completion of a working hours training
• Clarify the targets they must meet
• Plan follow-up audits to verify progress

Strategic suppliers

For high-volume or long-term partners:

• Hold joint discussions with sourcing companies and factories
• Agree on specific reduction timelines
• Conduct root cause analysis
• Request a prevention plan focused on long-term improvements
• Monitor updates using follow-up audits.

This differentiated approach ensures that resources are focused where they matter most.

How amfori can support your company

With amfori BSCI, you gain a clear view of social risks across your supply chain through a standardised, robust and internationally recognised methodology. Our social audits, conducted by certified third-party auditors, give you verified data you can trust to make confident sourcing decisions, meet regulatory requirements, and strengthen supply chain resilience.

Specifically for working hours, the audit report details:

• The standard and applied overtime rate for workdays and national holidays
• The legal overtime limit per month and per week for the country in scope
• The maximum weekly overtime hours for the sampled months
• The highest number of overtime hours per worker in the samples
• How working hours are managed
• How the policies and procedures are implemented according to international, local and amfori BSCI requirements

With this information, you will be able to identify risks in your supply chain and support your suppliers in addressing excessive overtime practices.

By connecting audits with corrective actions, training materials for you and your suppliers, and structured follow-up to monitor improvements, amfori BSCI enables you to demonstrate measurable progress, protect your brand, and manage social risks efficiently.

Learn how to make social audits work for your business 

Would you like to know how amfori BSCI’s high-quality audits and holistic approach help companies turn audit data into targeted action and strengthen supply chain resilience?

Watch the on-demand webinar to learn how to integrate amfori BSCI into risk management, with practical examples from home improvement company Kingfisher and fashion brand AllSaints.