Is Japanese work culture as bad as people say?
Most Japanese employees only take 50% of the paid leave that they’re entitled to. I’ve met people in Japan who haven’t taken more than 5 days off an entire year, which is kind of crazy when you think about it.
Even though some companies are getting more progressive and laws are changing, there’s an entire shift in mentality that’s necessary before Japanese employees actually take the time off. In Japanese there’s a term, “gaman suru,” which means to persevere, and it’s the underlying philosophy behind how many companies treat their employees.
Is work sucking your life away and slowly killing you from the inside? Gaman suru! You’ve got to work to make a livin’!
Do you go to the bathroom every day and cry during your lunch break? Gaman suru. It’s part of the job!
Does your brain shut off at 5pm, but you linger around until 8pm pretending to work because your coworkers and boss will judge you? Gaman suru. We’re all in it together, buddy!
No wonder Japan’s economy is inefficient…
But on the other hand, Japan isn’t that different than the US, where the number of people taking paid leave is also lagging compared to other developed countries in Asia and Europe.
Japanese employees, like US employees, do a lot of the same stuff. They commute in annoying traffic (or trains), work 5–6 days a week, like to goof off during work, pretend like they’re working after 3pm as they browse facebook, chat at the water cooler, flirt with their colleagues, and go drinking sometimes after work.
It’s similar… but different. My friend Victor pointed out that while the general scheme is the same in the US and Japan, because of the culture, that 8 hours gets stretched to something like 9/10, commutes go from 10 minutes to 30 minutes/an hour for many, and goofing off/wasting time gets replaced with smoking, or doing your best to look busy while doing nothing.
The problem is that even when workers do get the time off, or get a supportive boss who tells them go home, the work, work, work mentality has become so engrained that they don’t know what else to do. Do we watch a movie? Go to the park? Go on a date? This may seem sad, but companies need to provide that sort of social support in addition to relaxing working hours, and simply saying “we’re cutting overtime” won’t actually reduce overtime.
So, work in Japan is unproductive. Products are highly Japan-centric, not global. Even when people get time off, they still want to work. Oh, not to mention, it’s also really tough to fire people in Japan (and the law is on the side of the employee), so companies hold on to unproductive employees in fear of getting sued. That whole mentality plus the legal system, as you can imagine, is stifling innovation.
Tim Romero who runs the Disrupting Japan podcast suggests that we fire most HR people — and he’s only half joking. He says,
“In the U.S. and Europe, the H.R. department is an administrative function. Not so in Japan. the H.R. department is a power base. All the senior executives in any major Japanese corporation owe more than a few favors to some people on H.R. This is a system that prevents hiring the best talent sometimes because the H.R. is the one deciding who should be hired rather than the department that needs to hire the people[…] the best thing I can do to help innovation and creativity would be to just force them to remake their H.R. department. Like one-tenth the size.”
Now, all this talk about work culture in Japan is a generalization, but it is not a stereotype. This means that while it’s true that there are tons of companies like this in Japan, there are also a lot of progressive companies in Japan with reasonable work hours, substantial paternity and maternity leave, flex time and friendly conditions for working mothers, foreign employees, and decent salaries.
If you’re looking for work in Japan you should be aware that there are crappy companies and plenty of problems exist, but it’s in your power to ask probing question during your job interview and find out what sort of company it really is. And if possible try to speak to some ex-employees of that company to get their feedback and take on how it was like to work there. It may require some extra work on your part but it’s certainly worth the effort considering it’s your career!