Read the news that Toyota planning to apply four days working from this year and it made immediately made me to think how much pressure it going to put on down the line not just the Toyota employees but as well supplier considering Japanese ways working.
Would like to hear thought on this whether this gonna bring better work balance life actually. Most of other automotive companies try to follow Toyota hence it ll be interesting to see what does other companies do.
by Jazzlike_Taste8666
23 comments
My company introduced optional 4 days work week, but the monthly hours didn’t change. That means you can do 2h overtime every day and take an extra day off on the week.
Even then it does sound great, but almost all of the main staff (the people whose job are directly linked to company production) just keep doing 1 to 2 hours overtime for 5 days a week.
A few of the supporting staff do make use of the system and I don’t really think they are discouraged to do it. Being still an uncommon perk, I think it really helps the company keeping really great supporting staff without having to offer much higher salaries than the competition. But I doubt any of the “main staff” would get any promotion by working 4 days a week.
In conclusion, for 4 days working week to work it must be mandatory to everyone and well enforced, not optional.
Option 1) they’ll try it for a bit, see some worker metric drop, panic and go back to tradition or
Option 2) workers won’t be able to get all their work done and have to come in on weekends or work longer hours on the 4 days. Work-life balance will be worse not better as a result.
When it comes to change and Japan, I am very bearish
What are people going to do with an extra day off though? For most people two days weekend is enough. If you make it three days people won’t do anymore because money is tight these days. Unless you pay them more to work less days, I can’t see the point.
Being automotive I could see people being okay with that system but try applying to any other sector? I don’t think the average person here would take it up, they’d feel it caused too much 迷惑　to colleagues.
A friend of mine was one of a group of translators hired for a couple of weeks to instruct 1000’s of Indians brought in to the factory. I doubt they’ll be going to a 4 day week.
It is important to remember that Toyota Japan doesn’t actually make a lot of cars by hand anymore. I’ve been in Toyota plants and most of the actual manufacturing work is done by “robots”, although a better description would be “machines so huge that it would boggle your mind”.
Most of Toyota Japan’s work is, as you’d expect from a highly educated population, research and development. In other words, “thinking work”.
A lot of Japanese companies are slowly (PAINFULLY SLOWLY) waking up to the idea that keeping people at their desks from 8am to 8pm for 5 days a week does not encourage creativity, problem solving, or innovation. Mostly it encourages boredom and finding new ways to play with your smartphone while pretending to work as your elderly boss naps at his desk.
In short, Japanese “ways of working” that worked extremely well in the pre-Industry 3.0 era where production lines mostly just required lots of hands and lots of multi-skilling aren’t working anymore in an era where innovation, creativity, and problem solving are the key competitive advantages in modern manufacturing.
The “ways of working” need to change, and the bottom line is that an engineer is much more likely to have a revolutionary new idea if they’re let out of the office for an extra day a week to go and relax. Ask any researcher, creative person, or scientist and they’ll tell you that their best ideas generally come just after they’ve slept, or when they’re in the shower, or while having coffee at a cafe doodling on a napkin. The number of great ideas they had in the office while filling out paperwork? Almost zero.
改善　(Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement) was invented at Toyota. My father, who worked for decades in manufacturing, used to fly to Japan frequently to study the Toyota Method
You can be certain if they are thinking of switching to a 4-day work week, they’ve thought this through
I think some will work at home even though it is a 4 day work week and the sub contractors have to make up for that one day, meaning they will work overtime!
I sometimes feel like for all the projects we do at my company with American clients, we might as well not work on Mondays because we can’t talk with the clients since it’s Sunday for them.
It would work out pretty well imo, starting a bit earlier for more time with clients.
Running to apply for a job at Toyota
What Toyota’s doing not exactly rare and Japanese workers
are satisfied with it. It is only newsworthy because Toyota is the biggest company in Japan, not because it is something new or rare.
https://webtan.impress.co.jp/n/2023/06/26/45114?amp
https://webtan.impress.co.jp/n/2021/11/11/41894?amp
Well if that works out it’s effects would be very interesting, as a person working for Auto industry i really looking forward to see the outcome.
4 day workweek would mean longer working hours on the 4 days, right? If it is compulsory for everyone, they are going to lose a lot of employees who may have young children and can’t swing the hours with daycare drop offs and pick ups.
If companies really want to be radically progressive, they could do something like offer more paid leave.
tell us more when it’s applied.
Hello, i work as a factory worker in toyoto for 3 months now. Yes, you work for 4 days but in return you work longer hours. For morning shift, i work from 8 to 6:40. And i night shift it’s 9pm to 7:40pm. Dunno if that’ll be the case everywhere tho
This kind of PR moves don’t have much truth in the end. A well-known American company has done the same in Japan for a month when their business is lowest anyway, and then went back to 5 days a week, sometimes until 3 am and on weekends (home office). However, if you google their name you will only see results about 4 days a week work, and nothing about going back to 5 days a week, 3 ams and weekends.
Tbh as long as they aren’t micro-managing every breath of each employee and setting ridiculous deadlines it might just work.
I’ve not witnessed the JP automotive industry personally, but I’ve definitely seen the amounts of wasted time and effort that happens in the average Japanese workplace.
Maybe they’ll move on from having everything copied on physical paper with a dedicated member to highlight and sticker out stuff and digitize? Who knows.
Support 3 day weekend
Lead the way Japan!
I had a Haken contract that wasn’t extended because I didn’t work enough overtime.
The Toyota factory schedule also only had the week long major holidays of obon, golden week, and new year’s. They didn’t observe any other holidays.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Well they talking about it for years… won’t happen
Depends on the position/role. For international companies like Toyota, the timezone differences make communicating abroad difficult. It might be better to have a Monday off instead of Friday.
since my work is the supplier to most car companies, and if they would adapt toyota’s schedule, i can see these 2 possibilities:
* double the work load, all through the night.
* 4 days work + mandatory 5th day.
either way, nothing would change, except for the additional work we’ll receive.
Toyota Japan can’t keep up with the demand anymore they only make a certain amount of cars per month for a specific region if they can’t meet that demand they’ll get more cars from another region and fulfill that order. I am not surprised by this but then again people would want a Japanese made car idk interested to see how this all is going to play out.