Human resources

Working from home means you won’t get promoted – in Japan and elsewhere too?

Even before the pandemic, Japanese employees only took around half of their paid leave.  I remember 30 years’ ago the company union of my Japanese workplace campaigning every year to get its members to take more than the 10 or 11 days holiday a year they would take out of the 24 or so they were due.  In the USA around 70% of paid leave is taken and in Europe it’s closer to 100%.

Professor Hajime Ota of Doshisha University points out that this is partly because in many Western countries, companies must compensate employees for holidays not taken or are required to make employees take holidays – in the financial services industry in the UK for example.  Japan is also facing a labour shortage, so people feel under pressure to do overtime instead.

A 2010 survey by the Japan Institute for Labor Policy and Training found that the top reasons for not taking paid leave were: “because it would cause problems for my co-workers”, “because other employees are not taking their annual leave” and “my boss is not happy about me taking leave”. Similarly, a 2005 survey found that people were working overtime because “my boss and co-workers are doing overtime” and “it is difficult to leave the office if others are still working.”  So it is basically social pressures – face time overtime – that are at the root of this.

Overtime pay is lower in Japan than elsewhere too – 25% of normal pay as compared to 50% or more in Europe or the USA. Also many Japanese employees are doing “service overtime” where they are not getting paid at all, even though this is supposedly illegal.

Professor Ota says that this shows Japanese employees want the approval of their co-workers and boss rather than extra money for their overtime. People who take all their leave and only work their set hours are looked askance at. So it is understandable that working from home and flexible working, workations and so on are not popular in Japan – unless all employees take it up.

As I have frequently said, and Professor Ota confirms, in many Japanese workplaces there are no clear job descriptions, so it is difficult to evaluate individual performance objectively. The feelings and emotions of the evaluator tend to be more influential. A 2001 survey of 1,406 white collar workers in Japanese and Western companies found that 75% of Western respondents said that they would not give softer evaluations to subordinates just because they were pleasant to work with whereas 29% of Japanese respondents said they would not. Conversely 6% of Western respondents said they may give a softer evaluation to a pleasant subordinate and 20% of Japanese respondents said they would.

Western respondents may well be fooling themselves that they are capable of such objectivity, and Japanese respondents are being more honest. Professor Ota also puts it down to the importance of the “in-group” in Japanese workplaces, and therefore the need to be “close” to your boss in all senses.  But this concern that working from home impacts promotion negatively is not confined to Japan – as many recent articles and surveys publicised in the Western media confirm.

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Finding a balance in employee development

At a meeting I facilitated of Japanese and non-Japanese board directors of a financial services company in London, the Japanese directors had many questions about employee development in the UK. They wanted to know how the highly specialized professionals in the firm gained the management knowledge needed to reach senior management positions. The answer was that in the UK this is largely through attending externally provided courses, in contrast to Japan where this knowledge has traditionally been gained “on the job” through job rotation.

This then led to a further question – what is the incentive for employers to invest in externally provided training if employees just use this as a springboard to go to another company?

The answer to this was that British financial services companies are under increasing pressure from the regulatory authorities for managers to be accountable for not only their own conduct and behaviour but also that of their team. This means that the annual performance appraisal is not just about whether performance targets have been met but also behavioural goals. Any gaps between expectations and achievement in terms of performance and behaviour should then lead to a development conversation about what kind of training and resources the employee needs to do their job better.

With the introduction of “job type” (job kei) HR systems, this kind of approach will be needed in Japan too. It is different from seika shugi/performance based systems because seika shugi was more focused on performance targets and the impact on bonuses, whereas job type appraisals are both on performance and behaviours and what this means for the person’s future development.

Managers cannot just leave it up to HR departments to take their usual approach to training each cohort simultaneously because the training has to fit the job descriptions and personal development plans.  Similarly pay and bonuses cannot be set at a “one size fits all” basis across every department either.

It may take a while for a graduate recruit to grow into the job, however, depending on the function or business they are allocated to, so it would be unfair if there was too much disparity in the way the graduate intake was treated, early on.

This is why major employers in Europe such as Unilever have multiple graduate training programmes.  Unilever offers 7 different tracks for its Future Leaders Programme for new graduates: marketing, HR, finance, R&D, supply chain and engineering, technology management and customer development (sales).

I nearly joined the Unilever marketing track (more than 30 years’ ago) but rejected the offer because I felt overwhelmed by the huge binder they placed in front of me, mapping out my first three years in minute detail. Instead, I joined a PR company as one of their first graduate recruits. I later came to regret this choice, as the training programme was entirely in-house, poorly executed and graduate trainees were treated inconsistently. Japanese companies need to find a balance between these two extremes and the Japanese one cohort model, both overseas and in Japan.

This article was originally published in Japanese in the Teikoku Databank News on 11th November 2020

For more content like this, subscribe to the free Rudlin Consulting Newsletter. 最新の在欧日系企業の状況については無料の月刊Rudlin Consulting ニューズレターにご登録ください。

An end to one size fits all training in Japan

At a meeting I facilitated of Japanese and non-Japanese board directors of a financial services company in London, the Japanese directors had many questions about employee development in the UK. They wanted to know how the highly specialized professionals in the firm gained the management knowledge needed to reach senior management positions. The answer was that in the UK this is largely through attending externally provided courses, in contrast to Japan where this knowledge has traditionally been gained “on the job” through job rotation.

This then led to a further question – what is the incentive for employers to invest in externally provided training if employees just use this as a springboard to go to another company?

The answer to this was that British financial services companies are under increasing pressure from the regulatory authorities for managers to be accountable for not only their own conduct and behaviour but also that of their team. This means that the annual performance appraisal is not just about whether performance targets have been met but also behavioural goals. Any gaps between expectations and achievement in terms of performance and behaviour should then lead to a development conversation about what kind of training and resources the employee needs to do their job better.

With the introduction of “job type” (known as “job kei” in Japanese) HR systems, this kind of approach will be needed in Japan too. It is different from seika shugi (literally “results based system”, introduced in many Japanese companies in the 1990s and 2000s) because seika shugi was more focused on performance targets and the impact on bonuses, whereas job type appraisals are both on performance and behaviours and what this means for the person’s future development.

Managers cannot just leave it up to HR departments to take the “yoko narabi” (one size fits all) approach to training each cohort simultaneously because the training has to fit the job descriptions and personal development plans.  Similarly pay and bonuses cannot be set at a “one size fits all” basis across every department either.

It may take a while for a graduate recruit to grow into the job, however, depending on the function or business they are allocated to, so it would be unfair if there was too much disparity in the way the graduate intake was treated, early on.

This is why major employers in Europe such as Unilever have multiple graduate training programmes.  Unilever offers 7 different tracks for its Future Leaders Programme for new graduates: marketing, HR, finance, R&D, supply chain and engineering, technology management and customer development (sales).

I nearly joined the Unilever marketing track (more than 30 years’ ago) but rejected the offer because I felt overwhelmed by the huge binder they placed in front of me, mapping out my first three years in minute detail. Instead, I joined a PR company as one of their first graduate recruits. I later came to regret this choice, as the training programme was entirely in-house, poorly executed and graduate trainees were treated inconsistently. Japanese companies need to find a balance between these two extremes and the Japanese yokonarabi model, both overseas and in Japan. 

This article by Pernille Rudlin originally appeared in Japanese in the 11th November 2020 edition of Teikoku Databank News

For more content like this, subscribe to the free Rudlin Consulting Newsletter. 最新の在欧日系企業の状況については無料の月刊Rudlin Consulting ニューズレターにご登録ください。