| The
recent recession has made
companies rethink their employment strategies.
Traditionally,
Japanese companies have promoted people on the basis of
age and seniority, at least until they neared top
management. A young recruit, no matter how able, has to
wait for those above him to be promoted before he too
could move up. Foreign firms in Japan have followed the
merit-based promotion system and the Japanese working
abroad have helped spread the idea back at home. In a
survey conducted by the Prime Minister’s Office, young
adults are less favorable towards the seniority system.
They prefer salaries commensurate with performance
rather than age. In addition, nearly three-quarters of
men and 70 percent of women in their 20s said that they
would change jobs if they could find more challenging
employment, compared with 44 percent of all respondents.
The
objective of
Japanese corporations to have lifetime employment is
to ensure employee loyalty. Though an increasing number
of lifetime employees switch jobs, most are expected to
spend their lives in the same firm. Today’s talk of
restructuring comes at a time when
values are changing. When
lifetime employment was being questioned in the
‘70s, Japan's priority was to build a strong economy and
manufacturing base that could hold its own
internationally. No one questioned the need for
hard work and personal sacrifice to do this. Now, with
that objective met, or even exceeded, people are
considering the quality of their lives.
Most
Japanese agree that improving quality means working
less. In 1992, the total number of hours worked by the
average employee dropped below 2,000 for the first time
ever, to reach 1,972 hours. But this is a long way from
the government’s target of 1,800. Cutting total hours
equates to a combination of shortening the working day,
adopting a five-day week in more companies, and
persuading employees to
take
longer holidays. The concern is so widespread that
even former Prime Minister Hosokawa made a suggestion
that the national
holidays
be clubbed with weekends to give people a chance to
have
longer breaks for recreation. Tokyo local government
offices have their lights switched off at the closing
hours to discourage employees from staying late at the
workplace (the strategy does not seem to work very
effectively since the Japanese still think it is a
disgrace to get back home before midnight; so they will
kill their time in a
bar or go to a pachinko parlor). |
