Not having read the article, I’m going to assume the answer is in the question. It’s pretty common knowledge that high working hours don’t correlate to high productivity despite what middle managers apparently think
There’s also a focus on process over results, which leads to anachronistic practices remaining long after their usefulness.
The lack of change is one factor.
Before COVID, Japanese companies would fight against any changes. That’s why they still use fax machines, hankos and huge paper trails.
When COVID came along, they were actually forced to change many things like being able to remotely check in and out from work due to WFM.
However, companies are still reluctant to change unless the government explicitly tells them to. Then you have the companies that embrace change and innovate: Rakuten, PayPay, LINE. Just a shame companies aren’t more like them.
Longer working hours correlates with lower productivity per employee-hour everywhere in the world. But it is a symptom, not a cause, in most cases.
Productivity in the manufacturing sector is generally world class; this is obviously speaking to the service sector where “presenteeism” and a host of other issues increase hours worked.
Very complex topic where you won’t find simple answers once you dig deeper.
#1 Who does this comparison? Why does he do it? Agenda e.g.?
#2 Hours at the workplace are not hours worked. During work hours in Japan, there actually is a lot of time in regards for care for the employees. Time spend at the company is not necessarily time spend working.
#3 Being protective and avert to changes is not always bad. Many companies in Japan tend to play it safe in a lot of regards. Whenever the world gets hit by some crisis, some people look to Japan and wonder why they often seem to have easier times dealing with those.
That said, pretty nice article. Personally, I don’t want to dive too deep into this because – though I am roughly aware about what is going – the time I did actually dig into those topics (I did during my studies) is quite some years away now, so I did just give some others ideas / opinions on this topic.
It is common to have everyone in a meeting go and do the same task and bring the result back to the next meeting. Then they choose which results will be used. All but one will have been done in vain. Not only is this redundans and wasteful, it is where motivation goes to die.
2 things observed lately in a medium sized org:
1. Recruiting young TALENT is very hard. The labor market is very competitive for good candidates and we have a tough time filling job slots.
2. Email absolutely crushes us. There is a massive reliance on email and excel and human data entry based systems to a degree that blows my mind. Like they literally do not know what a database is or how one functions.
ENDLESS email discussions of simple topics.
I know someone would say it can happen in any company – I assure you – not like I’ve observed in mine.
8 comments
Not having read the article, I’m going to assume the answer is in the question.
It’s pretty common knowledge that high working hours don’t correlate to high productivity despite what middle managers apparently think
There’s also a focus on process over results, which leads to anachronistic practices remaining long after their usefulness.
The lack of change is one factor.
Before COVID, Japanese companies would fight against any changes. That’s why they still use fax machines, hankos and huge paper trails.
When COVID came along, they were actually forced to change many things like being able to remotely check in and out from work due to WFM.
However, companies are still reluctant to change unless the government explicitly tells them to. Then you have the companies that embrace change and innovate: Rakuten, PayPay, LINE. Just a shame companies aren’t more like them.
Longer working hours correlates with lower productivity per employee-hour everywhere in the world. But it is a symptom, not a cause, in most cases.
Productivity in the manufacturing sector is generally world class; this is obviously speaking to the service sector where “presenteeism” and a host of other issues increase hours worked.
Very complex topic where you won’t find simple answers once you dig deeper.
#1 Who does this comparison? Why does he do it? Agenda e.g.?
#2 Hours at the workplace are not hours worked. During work hours in Japan, there actually is a lot of time in regards for care for the employees. Time spend at the company is not necessarily time spend working.
#3 Being protective and avert to changes is not always bad. Many companies in Japan tend to play it safe in a lot of regards. Whenever the world gets hit by some crisis, some people look to Japan and wonder why they often seem to have easier times dealing with those.
That said, pretty nice article. Personally, I don’t want to dive too deep into this because – though I am roughly aware about what is going – the time I did actually dig into those topics (I did during my studies) is quite some years away now, so I did just give some others ideas / opinions on this topic.
It is common to have everyone in a meeting go and do the same task and bring the result back to the next meeting. Then they choose which results will be used. All but one will have been done in vain. Not only is this redundans and wasteful, it is where motivation goes to die.
2 things observed lately in a medium sized org:
1. Recruiting young TALENT is very hard. The labor market is very competitive for good candidates and we have a tough time filling job slots.
2. Email absolutely crushes us. There is a massive reliance on email and excel and human data entry based systems to a degree that blows my mind. Like they literally do not know what a database is or how one functions.
ENDLESS email discussions of simple topics.
I know someone would say it can happen in any company – I assure you – not like I’ve observed in mine.