Category: Human resources

Chipping away at the three treasures of Japanese HR

Several Japanese blue chip companies have announced some quite radical changes to their HR systems, just in time for the new Reiwa era. The so called three treasures of lifetime employment, seniority based pay and a company union have been looking a little tarnished for some years now. They seem a legacy not even of the Heisei era but of the post war Showa era of a booming economy and a need to retain a young workforce.

Hitachi had shown the way four years ago (as described in our blog post at the time), abolishing seniority based pay for its managers and replacing it with pay based on job roles. They have made further waves recently with the announcement of the first ever Hitachi subsidiary President to be in their forties.  The newly formed Hitachi Global Life Solutions will be led by Jun Taniguchi, born in 1972.

Hitachi claim that this new system is needed for the company to be truly global and able to appoint and transfer managers around the world, regardless of where they were recruited. Beer and soft drink manufacturer Asahi Group Holdings has also been shifting to global standards. Around half their employees are non-Japanese, as a result of their acquisitions of European brands such as Peroni, Grolsch and Fullers. They have said their Presidents and CEOs will be evaluated on return on equity from now on, and given the boot if it is not maintained above 13%.

Japanese megabank MUFG says it will reduce new hires in Japan by 45% to 530 next spring, and will cut the 6000 employees in its Tokyo headquarters by half. Not all Japanese HR traditions are being thrown out of the window, however, as the surplus 3000 will not be made redundant, but rather redeployed to sales functions or sent overseas to areas where MUFG is expanding like the USA and Asia (but not it seems, Europe).  MUFG  is automating the functions that these staff performed, as well as cutting many of its retail branches in Japan. It will instead be beefing up its overseas compliance and digital payment systems divisions.

Some Japanese politicians and commentators have said that the “rei” of Reiwa sounds rather cold, as it can sometimes mean “order” or “command”.  It also, when combined with the radical for water, becomes a character meaning chilly or freezing.  It certainly feels like some icy winds will be blasting through Japanese cosy HR traditions in the new era.

 

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Will Hitachi lop off one of its three branches?

I keep blogging about Hitachi, because they are one of the most influential companies in Japanese business circles, along with Toyota and Panasonic. The way they have reinvented themselves since their record breaking loss in 2009 is watched closely by other Japanese blue chips.

According to the Nikkei Business magazine last month, discussions are well advanced to sell off Hitachi Chemical and Hitachi Construction Machinery. Both have appointed financial advisors – a non-Japanese investment bank  in Hitachi Construction Machinery’s case.  Hitachi Chemical is one of Hitachi’s three largest and longest surviving subsidiaries, known as the Three Branches (Hitachi Metals and Hitachi Cable being the other two).

Hitachi has already reduced 900 subsidiaries down to 500 and finalised the sale of car navigation system subsidiary Clarion to the French company Faurecia last month. The company will be delisted, ending 56 years of history as a listed company, leaving Hitachi with only 4 listed subsidiaries.

Clarion used to have a close relationship with Nissan, who in turn held a small share of Clarion,. With Ghosn’s restructuring of supply chains in the 2000s, Clarion began to struggle, and Hitachi stepped in, ending with over 60% share in the company. Faurecia says its interest in Clarion is to strengthen its autonomous driving capabilities. It also aims to improve Faurecia sales to Japanese and American car manufacturers and Clarion sales to European manufacturers. It may even invest in Clarion’s plant in Hungary, which is currently underutilized.

Social Innovation, not commoditization

Hitachi meanwhile is focusing its business on what it calls “Social Innovation” – the Internet of Things and social infrastructure. It is hiving off any businesses which are product focused and in danger of becoming commoditized. This would include Hitachi Chemicals, who have a stable profit margin of 5%, mainly providing chemicals for semiconductors and smartphones.  Hitachi Construction Machinery is trying to move more into the services sector, and its profit margins are not as healthy as competitor Komatsu.

Neither company wants to be sold off, according to an investment banking insider, but are under pressure from Hitachi. So rather then be bought by a new parent company that they did not choose, they are making defensive moves. This won’t be the first time that one of Hitachi’s subsidiaries chose their own buyer. Hitachi Power Tools led the negotations themselves that ended in being sold to KKR, the American private equity fund in 2017.

Conversely, Hitachi is buying up businesses where it feels it needs strengthening, such as its acquisition last year of Swiss company ABB’s power grid business.  Hitachi needs the cash for growth, which is another reason for selling off its listed subsidiaries.

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Why Germans are happier than the Japanese

Japanese people need to take longer holidays, is the answer to why Germans are happier than the Japanese, according to Japanese freelance journalist Toru Kumagai in his new book “Why do Germans feel rich on only Y2.9m (£20,000) a year?”

Japanese people see shopping as a leisure activity that they can do in just a few hours or a day for pleasure or stress release, and are too busy working. Germans can take holidays as they please, and will take 2 or 3 weeks off work at a time.

When Germans go on holiday, they will go to the seaside or countryside, with their family. In a recent insurance company survey, “sunshine and nature” was seen as the most attractive element of a holiday.  Kumagai points out that as a Northern European country, Germany does not get as many hours of sunshine as Portugal or Southern France.  So holidays are an important moment to refresh and recharge.

I’ve often thought that golf continues to be popular in Japan because it provides distant horizons and greenery. Respectable research in the West has shown a link between greenspace and mental health, although the causality is not yet clear. Although there is a lack of greenspace in Japanese cities, Japanese are good at taking mini breaks that let them refresh and recharge in natural surroundings, such as hiking in the mountains and staying in hot spring resorts.

Compared to Germany, there are far more advertisements and TV commercials aimed at selling something new and leading edge – whether it’s smartphones, beer or sweets, Kumagai notes.  Japanese throw away old things even if they are still usable, as their homes are overflowing with new purchases.  Whereas according to Kumagai, Germans will treasure old items and are used to buying second hand items. They are also very environmentally conscious and one of the major recycling nations of the world.

Kumagai also points the finger at the overservicing of customers in Japan, placing burdens on employees. He quickly adds that he doesn’t want German bad customer service to be imported into Japan, but just that Japan has gone too far in trying to please.  For example, when you buy bread rolls in Japan, each one is put in a separate bag, and then all the bags put in another bag.  If this kind of overservicing and customer expectations were reduced, Japanese workers could take longer holidays, Kumagai suggests.

Japanese consumers need to accept that a delivery might take a day longer, so more people can take Sundays off, or that delivery time windows will not be quite so narrow.  Customers in Germany get thrown out of the shop when it’s closing time, but not in Japan.

I watched Spirited Away for the second time recently, which made me more aware of the environmental message in it – such as the river spirit spewing up old bicycles and trash.  I also realised the Shinto element was a strong motif – the idea of spirits in natural things and the need to simplify life by not being unnecessarily greedy and accumulative.  Much has been written, often snide, about the Shinto influence on Marie Kondo’s “spark joy” approach to decluttering, but as Kumagai says, Japan could benefit from a richer spiritual life if it went back to those Shinto ways (and also Buddhist) of not demanding so much and enduring so much in terms of long hours of work.

 

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Mitsubishi Corporation – a microcosm of the challenges facing Japanese business

The death of the Japanese trading company and the “keiretsu” (company grouping) model has been repeatedly announced over the nearly thirty years since I started working for leading trading company Mitsubishi Corporation and researching their history. But when the Nikkei newspaper runs a three part series on whether Mitsubishi Corporation’s business model is bust, (as they do regularly) it’s worth a look, as Mitsubishi Corporation’s doings are closely watched by the rest of Japanese business.

Digital speed

Part one of the Nikkei series deals with the digital revolution and how it might disintermediate middlemen like Mitsubishi Corp. It notes that Mitsubishi Corp is likely to announce a record profit for 2018/9, but calls Mitsubishi Corp’s legacy a “heavy burden” in trying to find a new digital way to do business.

It looks at how young Mitsubishi employees are scouring Shanghai and Guangzhou for new technologies in convenience stores that they can bring back to Japan.  Mitsubishi Corporation turned Lawson, a convenience store chain in Japan, into a fully owned subsidiary in 2017, partly in response to the losses made on its traditional commodities trading business. But convenience stores themselves are now being threatened by Amazon and China’s Alibaba.

In the mid term plan announced last autumn, Mitsubishi Corp set up a special cross-company structure to look at communications and data [pretty sure we had something like that when I worked there 25 years’ ago, but anyway] and appointed an executive from the energy division (one of the traditional powerful factions at Mitsubishi Corp) as Chief Digital Officer.  “Other trading companies are not our competitors any more” says a senior Mitsubishi Corp executive.  Instead they are looking at SoftBank, who have double the profit and double the share price of Mitsubishi Corporation – a reverse of 10 years’ ago.

The concern, as with so many older Japanese companies, is the speed of change. President Kakiuchi syas he wants to decide within 3 years how to participate in the digital economy – but is that fast enough, the Nikkei asks.

The Three Diamond brand

“Mitsubishi Heavy Industries can fix it by themselves” said a senior executive at Mitsubishi Corporation in September 2018. A subsidiary of Mitsubishi Heavy, Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation was facing delays in developing its Mitsubishi Regional Jet and needed further investment. The main branches of the Mitsubishi Three Diamonds, the core of the Friday Meeting are Mitsubishi Corporation, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and MUFG Bank.  It was usual in the past for Mitsubishi Corporation to come to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ rescue [often grudgingly I would say] but this time they did not step in.

President Kakiuchi says Mitsubishi Corporation’s relations with other Mitsubishi companies are “no different from with normal independent companies” and has been reducing cross shareholdings.

The Mitsubishi Motors factory which started production in Indonesia in February 2019 of the Nissan Livina also illustrates how ties are weakening.  The factory is a joint venture between Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Corporation. Mitsubishi Motors was originally an offshoot of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Mitsubishi Corporation has been a frequent partner either in dealerships or production, but Mitsubishi Motors turned to Nissan for investment when it was hit by a fuel emissions scandal in 2016 and is now in a triple alliance with Nissan and Renault.  Up until then, the Mitsubishi group had always bailed it out, but repeated scandals meant they felt their fingers had been burned too often.  “To be frank, we have no role to play in this” said a Mitsubishi Corporation executive on the arrest of Ghosn, even though Mitsubishi Corporation had increased its investment in Mitsubishi Motors from 10% to 20% in 2018.  Mitsubishi Motors was selling around 1.2m vehicles a year, and the view was it had to enter an alliance, manufacturing 100 million a year to survive.

Chiyoda Corporation, a spin off from Mitsubishi Oil, asked Mitsubishi Corporation for financial support last year on a loss made on a US LNG plant construction joint venture. The President of Chiyoda Corporation, Masaji Santo, is a former Mitsubishi Corporation employee.  Mitsubishi Corporation was not only the lead shareholder in the LNG plant but was going to be a customer of the LNG plant, so insisted on a low construction cost, which was resulting in Chiyoda making a loss.  President Kakiuchi has said “we will do what we can to support” but is still considering the pros and cons.

Retaining young employees

“I didn’t want to feel regret” said a young employee in his twenties, who left Mitsubishi Corporation after a few years, to join an IT company, citing the difference in the speed of decision making between the two companies.  Mitsubishi Corporation has always been one of the favourites for the elite graduates of Japan, but recently it has dropped in the popularity rankings for Tokyo and Kyoto University graduates, losing out to foreign consultancies like McKinsey.

Graduates who want to make a difference quickly are avoiding trading companies, experts say. One reason is the continuing seniority based promotion system. It took around 20 years to become a general manager until recently, but now Mitsubishi Corporation has reformed its personnel system for the first time in 20 years, to allow capable employees to take on responsibility regardless of age.  Performance based systems and evaluations have been introduced at certain management grades, setting compensation on complexity of the job role and results. Young employees are polishing their management skills with overseas postings.

The Nikkei cites the example of a 33 year old employee posted to the Cote D’Ivoire, who started a solar panel energy project. A Tsukumo Fund has also been set up, to invest up to Y500m in any ideas that employees have which pass certain criteria, even if they don’t have their boss’s approval.

This last point is key to me – it was always possible to have a lot of autonomy, become a manager overseas at a young age and start new projects at Mitsubishi Corporation if you were capable enough, but you needed your manager and the rest of the hierachy’s support – and that took a lot of time.

As the Nikkei says, Mitsubishi Corporation is a microcosm of the Japanese business world. The lifetime employment, seniority based promotion system worked well in the post war era, but now with an ageing, shrinking workforce, companies have to become more flexible to attract young people and encourage innovation.

 

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5 types of Japanese colleagues who are “workstyle reform” blockers

I was surprised to see this explanation of  five generations of “workstyle reform” blockers in the Nikkei Business magazine came with a big red caution notice to readers not to take offence. The categories are not to be taken as hurtful stereotypes but based in research, and do not apply to all people of a particular age group, they explain.

So with that in mind, here’s a precis of the 5 types identified. Even though I’m not Japanese, I’m afraid I do recognise aspects of myself in the “middle manager” category, and am trying not to take offence. Although some of the characteristics are obviously derived from each age group’s experiences of the Japanese domestic economy and society, I am also reminded that there is plenty of evidence each generation around the world has complained about the other generation for the past thousand years or more.

1. The Veteran

Born between 1947-1951, so 66-71 years’ old

  • Work comes first
  • Believes in the virtue of hardship
  • Over strong sense of competition
  • Clings to past experiences of success
  • No intention of changing how they work
  • Gets angry if their way of working is rejected
  • Will oppose competitors’ opinions regardless of content
  • Caught up with “how things were” in the past.

2. The Executive

Born between 1952-1960 so 57-66 years’ old

  • Don’t rock the boat – doesn’t want to challenge
  • Laissez-faire
  • Always talks about “ideally”
  • People are people, I am what I am
  • Rather than change workstyle, is interested in what happens after retirement
  • Uninterested in reform, regardless of content
  • Just wants results, doesn’t make concrete proposals
  • Won’t listen, as retiring soon anyway

3. The middle manager

Born between 1961 and 1970, so 47 to 57 years’ old

  • Superficial
  • Thinks too highly of self
  • Extremely hedonistic
  • Sees everything in cost/benefit, mercenary terms
  • Reform should be done cheerfully, enjoyably without trying too hard
  • Won’t do it if not fun
  • Will oppose anything which increases own workload
  • Tells everyone to do their best and doesn’t do anything themselves
  • Will change the content of any reforms on a whim

4. The shop floor leader

Born between 1971 and 1986, so 31-47 years’ old

  • Pessimistic
  • Not good at interacting with other people
  • Prioritize risk avoidance
  • Strong sense of resignation – “they won’t understand”
  • “If this reform fails, there is no future for me”
  • Won’t promote reform if don’t trust the company
  • Too busy watching others’ reactions to say own conclusions

5. The staff member

Born between 1987 and 1994, so 23 to 31 years’ old.

  • Little sense of crisis
  • Not good at making an extra effort
  • Prioritizes personal life
  • Everything in moderation
  • “Is reform really necessary?” Won’t do it unless feels it’s necessary
  • Let other people take up new challenges or jobs requiring some thought
  • No empathy with the reasons behind the reforms
  • Doesn’t take the company so seriously, ignores directions

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Which Japanese companies have the most non-Japanese employees?

There are more than 80 listed Japanese companies who have more non-Japanese than Japanese employees, but are they truly global companies?

The companies with the largest proportions of non-Japanese employees are mostly electronics manufacturers with factories in Asia and China – Foster Electric (98.9% of its employees are non-Japanese), UMC Electronics (98.5%), Mabuchi Motor (96.4%) and Minebea Mitsumi (91.6%) for example.

Two of these have no non-Japanese in management positions, according to Toyo Keizai. (who define “management” as having management positions in the Japan headquarters). Minebea Mitsumi (with 9 non-Japanese managers representing 0.5% of management) has at least set a goal of having 10% of its management to be “diverse” and Toyo Keizai says there are more cases of, say, a Thai employee being seconded to Indonesia and then moving to Japan headquarters as part of a management development path – something that is more common in Western multinationals.

The Japanese company with the largest number of non-Japanese employees in absolute terms is Sumitomo Electric Industries – a big employer in the Europe, Middle East & Africa region too – with several automotive wire harness factories in Africa.  Other companies with large numbers of non-Japanese include the NYK group (due to employees manning ships and other logistics operatives) and NTT (who have acquired large multinational IT services companies like Dimension Data).

In terms of largest proportions or absolute numbers of non-Japanese in management in their headquarters, Nissan with 163 non-Japanese managers (5.9%) and Nomura with 181 non-Japanese managers (4.1% of management) are the standout companies in Toyo Keizai’s Top 100. The only other companies in the ranking with non Japanese management in double figures are Panasonic (27), Honda (15), Denso (15), Dentsu (14), Fujifilm (14), Fujitsu (14), and Daikin (10).

It is very tough being one of a handful of non-Japanese managers in Japan HQ, and I would agree with Toyo Keizai’s implication, that to offer truly global careers in a global company, both to Japanese and non-Japanese employees, the number of non-Japanese in management positions in the headquarters need to increase substantially in order to reach the kind of critical mass that makes a difference.

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German workstyle versus Japanese customer convenience

You can’t have German workstyles and Japanese customer convenience, says Shion Amemiya, a 26 year old Japanese woman who has been living and working in Germany for 4 years and has now written a book about it.  The book hits a nerve in Japan because of the pressure companies are under to reform their workplace cultures and cut back on overtime.  Germany is often pointed to as an example of a thriving economy where people don’t do overtime and take plenty of holidays.

Germany has one of the highest overtime rates in the EU, she says in an article in the Toyo Keizai. Actually, looking at Eurostat’s 2018 figures, the UK has the highest number of hours worked per week per full time worker and Germany is somewhere in the middle.

She points out that Germans will do overtime, if there is work that needs to be finished, although there are more Germans who will stick to their rights and leave on time regardless then there are in Japan.  But as she notes, those kinds of people will not be well evaluated by bosses or colleagues.

Overtime is worked in order to finish a job, and there is a lot less “face time” overtime in Germany than in Japan.  Also, if overtime is worked on one day, Germans will then work fewer hours to compensate for this the next day, she observes.

As for holidays – she says what is great for the holiday taker is not so wonderful for the end user. She notes how in the summer, offices are empty, but that also meant that the local government officials, dentists and doctors she wanted appointments with were also away on holiday, and her favourite cafe was shut. Often, the person away is the person in charge, and nobody else can take care of their work while they are gone, and you are told to wait a month.

In Japan customers will insist on the person in charge being contacted even if they are on holiday, but in Germany she notes, customers and suppliers are seen as equals, with mutual rights – “I take a holiday, so I must accommodate other people taking holidays.”

Because people don’t take much holiday in Japan, it is a convenient country – shops are always open, the person in charge is always available.  Just copying another country without realising the drawbacks is pointless.  Japan needs to come up with workstyle changes that are appropriate to Japan, she concludes.

 

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Fujitsu focusing on education of employees to improve overseas profitability

Fujitsu, one of the largest Japanese employers in Europe, has drastically reduced its hardware product range over the years, withdrawing from personal computing, mobile phones and semiconductors. Its CFO, Hidehiro Tsukano has said “we are no longer a manufacturer”, according to the Nikkei. The turning point was the appointment of Tatsuya Tanaka as President in 2015, himself from the industrial solutions sales side of the business rather than an engineer, with experience in Asia.

Tsukano believes profit should come from the value added by human beings rather than things. Because of Japan’s labour shortage, Fujitsu has been focusing on IT investment in retailing and service sectors, working closely with Microsoft.

However the consolidated operating profit margin to March 2018 was 3.6%, still far from the stated goal of 10%.  Profitability per head (Y1.23m) is higher than NEC (Y0.58m), but still significantly below the misnomered Nomura Research Institute (Y5.35m) and Itochu Techno-solutions (Y4m). Tanaka said at the recent annual results meeting that his aim to hit 10% operating profit margin within his term of office may have to be revised.

One major cause of this inability to reach higher profitability is Fujitsu’s overseas business, which is around 40% of turnover. The hardware sales model, based on sales of servers and PCs still remains and Fujitsu is in a price war with Lenovo and HP. It has not yet switched to the business model in Japan of adding value through IT services and the most recent quarter still showed a Y6.8bn loss.

Human resource development might be the key to improving overseas profitability. Tsukano has said he wants to use some of the cash freed up from a change in the pension scheme to invest in employee education.

A management policy briefing will take place in October, and although analysts are saying there is steady progress in reforms, they need to see some concrete measures for improving the profitability of the overseas business.

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Trends in Japanese company expatriation to Europe – or why are there so many Japanese women in Malta?

Despite a small decrease over the past three years, the UK continues to be the favourite destination in Europe for intra-company transferees – 8,684 as of October 2017 according to Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, compared to 8,518 in Germany.  Japanese company sponsored expats in Germany and the UK make up about 58% of all Japanese corporate expats (around 30,000) in the EU/EEA.

If you add in their dependents, it comes to over 50,000 Japanese living in Europe, at the behest of their employer. This compares to over 250,000 in Asia and just under 120,000 in North America, out of 463,000 Japanese intra company transferees and their families in globally.

Of course the number of company transferees in a country is not purely a function of the market size.  We crunched the numbers against population size and this interesting map showed up.  The tiny dark spot is Luxembourg, where the population is only just over half a million and there are 175 Japanese intra company transferees resident. The UK has the next highest density, then Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France. The highest density in Eastern Europe is in the Czech Republic.

 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs sticks to the old fashioned breakdown of male/female employees and Luxembourg is also an outlier there, with 41% of transferred employees being female, only surpassed by Ireland (46% 95/205 transferees), Malta (90% 19/21) and Cyprus (50% 2/4 transferees).  There are very low numbers of Japanese female employees  in Eastern European countries, and also Belgium. Maybe this has something to do with Toyota’s regional headquarters being in Brussels.

The average overall of female employees transferred to Europe is 25% of the total, and there has not been much movement in this over the past three years. The reason there are far more females proportionately in some countries than others has the same root cause as why there are more dense groups of Japanese in some countries than others – it depends on the industrial sector and the nature of the operation – whether it is manufacturing or services, or a regional headquarters.

The UK has a high density of Japanese company expatriates partly because of the three large Japanese automotive production sites there, but also because of the high density of financial services and holding companies in London and the South East. Japanese banks, trading companies and insurance companies send a lot of Japanese expats to their regional HQs, which are usually in the UK, including trainees on short term secondment, many of whom are female. Technology companies such as Sony, Ricoh and Canon also have large regional HQs in the UK and a high number of expats. Similarly Ireland has a lot of financial services companies, particularly aircraft leasing.  Luxembourg does have a couple of large manufacturers headquartered there – FANUC and TMD Friction – however, as you might expect, most of the other companies are financial services related.

There also tend to be large numbers of expats every time production sites are set up – engineers on short term projects, involved in technology transfer. Double digit increases have occurred over the past three years in Japanese expats being sent to Poland, Sweden, Hungary and Slovakia following investments there.

But the biggest increases numerically have been 602 more expats in Germany (up 8% over three years), 359 more in the Netherlands (up 23% over 3 years) and 252 more in France (up 7%) compared to drop of 62 (1%) in the UK.

The Netherlands has been the choice of quite a few Japanese financial services companies, along with Luxembourg and Germany, for strengthening EU presence post Brexit, as well as a stronghold for logistics companies. Its tax regime has also been attractive for holding companies – more brass plate up till now, but it would seem, now with actual physical presence too.

So why are there proportionately so many Japanese women employees transferred to Malta? Maybe they’re working at Konica Minolta‘s service operation there for 35 countries in the region*. A lot of smaller countries, with English and other language speaking graduate populations – such as Portugal – are becoming popular bases for outsourced support.

This suggests to us that the UK may be slowly losing its grip on being the preferred base for regional, functional and services headquarters for Japanese companies, and therefore the preferred destination for Japanese expatriates.  There is a long way to fall however.

* Andre Spitieri (non resident Ambassador to Japan from Malta) contacted me after I posted this blog to say that there are a lot of Japanese women working in Malta in the tourism industry. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there is only one Japanese company in Malta, and JETRO says it’s Konica Minolta. It may well be that there are branches of the big Japanese travel agencies in Malta, to which Japanese female employees have been posted, who are counted among the 19 female intra company transferees there.

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Who’s looking grumpy in Japan’s summer bonus season?

If you’ve noticed your Japanese colleagues looking grumpier than usual and making pointed remarks about the amount of money overseas offices soak up, you may need to be aware that it’s not just the heat and the typhoons getting to them, but the fact that despite Prime Minister Abe’s push, some companies are still cutting salaries –  and employee numbers are shrinking.  The summer bonus season, which will have been added to their monthly pay cheque in June or July, may have reminded them that their salaries have not increased much in real terms over all for some years, but they are supposed to be grateful they have a secure job, with bonuses, benefits and a pension.

It’s surprising to see who tops the list in Toyo Keizai’s ranking of companies who have had the biggest reductions in pay and number of employees over the past five years – trading company Mitsui Bussan is at #1. Toyo Keizai reckons this is because their business was badly hit by falling resource prices over the past few years.  Although average annual income at Mitsui is high – around Y12.3m (US$111,000), it has dropped by Y1.48m compared to five years’ ago.  The number of employees has also fallen by 201 to 5,971.  Sumitomo Corporation, another major trading company is at #9 – average income falling Y1.255m but personnel numbers only falling by 23.  Mitsubishi Corporation is at #78 – total average income has fallen by around Y260,000, and numbers of staff have dropped by 579 to 5,217.

As you might expect, given its recent problems and selling off of businesses, Toshiba is in the top rankings, at #15, having reduced the number of employees by 4,401, to 32,353, with average income falling by Y880,000. Similarly Sharp has also reduced total average income by around Y600,000 and cut staff at almost double the rate of Toshiba, by 8,175, to 13,363.  Sony has reduced staff even more, by 10,391 to 6,185, and total average income has fallen by Y410,000.

Eisai, the pharmaceuticals company, is at #23, having cut its staff by 938, to 3,246 and average income falling Y710,000.  There has been no obvious negative issues for Eisai over the past five years, so maybe this is the work of the CFO, Ryohei Yanagi, trying to keep ROE above 8%, as we previously blogged.

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